Baby Steps

Art

2012-01-25T21:05:00.002-06:00

It's a Chinese dragon, traditional for the new year, breathing fire.

Classical Homeschooling Carnival #21

2012-01-25T15:16:00.003-06:00

Hello! Welcome back to the Classical Homeschooling Carnival - it's been a while! Our holidays were so busy, and thus far nobody else has shown interest in hosting the carnival, so we took a bit of a break, but I'm excited to share the posts that have collected while I was busy doing other things!

We can jump right in with a post about Tiger & his Mum's adventures in Medieval Stained Glass, posted at The Tiger Chronicle. They had a great field trip to a stained glass museum, then made a stained glass craft at home, which turned out great!

Tiger at the museum.

Amy shared a list of math books at Delightful Children's Books. "The theme here is fun math books. Thus, if a book says something like “this is a division sign,” you will not find the book on this list." Sounds like my kind of math books! Additionally, she has a list of books about fish. Wish we'd seen that list when we visited the aquarium!

The Mama, of Concordia Classical Academy, shares her insights into teaching reading as she starts teaching her second child to read, in Reading Progression Explained. I particularly love her pre-reading ideas:

I also spend time on oral blending games and rhyming. For example, "C AAAAA T says what?" When they can hear the separate sounds and blend them together, we're ready to move on. I also think that rhyming is very important. Lots of silly songs and nursery rhymes help develop the ear for this. We work on this from the time they talk well until it clicks- about toddlerhood- 3/4.

It's been so long since the Carnival published that Pamela, over at Blah, Blah, Blog, has three posts to share with us this time around, and it looks like they've been having a good time. The first is their family's adventures in trying yoga, in her post Relaxing Family Yoga... Well... Not Really. Turns out you can get find yoga clips on YouTube, and she shares her favorite channel. Next, she shares some of her experiences teaching Awesome Art History - to teenage boys. And the boys like it! Finally, Pamela shares a recent experience with Unsolicited Advice.


Pamela's Awesome Art History

Karyn, of Teach Beside Me, has an avid reader on her hands, and shares a list of books he's read and enjoyed in Books for Young Readers.

Here at Baby Steps, I'm also sharing two posts this time around. The first is this one, dealing with our continuing adventure in math: Monkey built a Stable out of his cuisenaire rods. The second is a Day in the Life post I did a little bit ago.

And that's it! Hopefully you found something to inspire you - and we'll see you back next month! Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Classical Homeschooling Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Scrapbooks and Missile Kisses

2012-01-24T21:03:00.002-06:00

I've recently discovered digital scrapbooking, and I love it. I've been working on Dragon's baby book while I try to figure out how to make digital scrapbooking work for the family books and Monkey's books. Creating the pages is a blast; printing them is a challenge. I don't have a system, but I'm getting closer!

Tonight Dragon saw this page I made for his book, for February of 2011.

When I told him, "That's Baby Dragon," he responded by kissing his hand and saying, "BOOM!" Around here we are raising manly-men, and they don't blow kisses. Nope, they stick 'em on a missile and shoot 'em.

"BOOM!!"

China

2012-01-24T12:22:00.003-06:00

More on Ancient China. We're lingering in this time & place; it's interesting. We've spent about 3 weeks on it, and I think that we'll stay one week more.

Plus, we found this awesome documentary on the Terra Cotta Warriors.

Chinese New Year

2012-01-23T21:23:00.000-06:00

There aren't any Chinese New Year events in our area, so we're watching some of the cool stuff online. And it is very cool.

A Good Day's Work

2012-01-23T11:48:00.001-06:00

We had a pretty good day. Read some about the Chinese New Year did some mapwork and a coloring sheet, read about the Body, did some free reading, and some grammar, a couple of narrations, and some math. And he did nearly everything in the morning. I'm not sure what was different, but I wish we could manage more days like this!

Busy Little Guy

2012-01-22T23:36:00.003-06:00

He's not very effective, yet, but he's getting there.

Nap Time

2012-01-22T16:34:00.000-06:00

It's nap time, and I have my boy all snuggled up. He has a lot to day about it:

No no no no. Don't need it need it need it. No. I don'tdon'tdon't need it.

Dada Dada Dada

Don't. Dat. Don't. Dat. Dat. Dat.

Done. Done.

Lois Lane

2012-01-14T19:15:00.000-06:00

Dad: So, what does Superman do?
Monkey: He defends his girlfriend.

Have you ever watched those Superman cartoons? That Lois has quite the scream on her.

Stable

2012-01-13T10:55:00.000-06:00

Monkey had some free play with the cuisenaire rods, and next thing I know, he's building a nativity scene. This is one of the first times that he's built pictures with the rods. The yellow and green is the manger, Baby Jesus is purple, and Mary and Joseph are the pink rods. The blue ones are "a force-field that protects the stable from all bad guys."

He built several incarnations of his stable, with different size rods. I thought it was interesting to see how he dealt with the shrinking size of the building - eventually, Mary and Joseph were squeezed right out of the Stable and had to be outside.

At the very end he added an Angel on top of the Stable to announce the birth.

It is always interesting to watch what he does when he have free play with the rods. I wouldn't have guessed that something like building rod pictures would be very "mathy" but in watching him build the various versions I realized that he was learning, very naturally, about the difference it makes to use larger or smaller building materials: when he shrank the walls, the interior shrank too, and thus the difficulties that Mary and Joseph were facing in being inside. This knowledge should come in handy when we start looking at perimiter and area. In the mean time, he had a good time, and that is valuable in and of itself - especially when doing math!

Money!

2012-01-07T13:03:00.000-06:00

Dragon: "I need money."
Mom: "You need money? Why??"
Dragon: "[babble babble] I tell Daddy."

Boy in a Box

2012-01-06T21:14:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T11:33:00.001-06:00

“There is no better time than now, this very Christmas season, for all of us to rededicate ourselves to the principles taught by Jesus Christ.” -Thomas S. Monson

My Boys

2011-12-23T14:16:00.000-06:00

Brotherly Love

2011-12-23T12:27:00.000-06:00

The other night I checked on my boys, and this is what I found. They're not usually so cuddly, but this time they'd gone to sleep on my bed. It made me smile to see them snuggle.

Great Ideals

2011-12-19T23:50:00.000-06:00

Pre-K/K at Home (part 2)

2011-12-19T19:21:00.000-06:00

In part 1, I talked about a number of things we do that help our little ones learn the language. Both of the boys have been early talkers, and I think all that talk and reading have contributed to that.

Phonics

With Monkey, teaching letters and their sounds happened very much by accident: He asked to use my mouse one day, so I let him click around Starfall a bit. He loved it so much that soon we were limiting his screen time. (We only used the free parts.) By his second birthday he knew all the letters and their sounds, and not long after I was starting to research phonics in preparation for introducing the next step. I knew he was young, but at the same time he was starting to show the "reading readiness" signs, and I had no idea what I was doing. I browsed across Happy Phonics and it has been the perfect fit in many ways.

Happy Phonics is an entirely games-based program: all the practice the new reader needs, but in a fun format. No writing necessary. Monkey and I started playing the program's games for about 15 minutes 2-3 times a week shortly before his 3rd birthday. (Now that he's older we've moved to doing it just about every day.) It starts with very basic stuff: letter sounds, matching the upper and lowercase letters, which was easy after Starfall. After a while we moved into the beginning blend games. Blends were hard for us. I wasn't teaching them very effectively at first, and we stayed there for a looong time. I'm also told that figuring out how to make those blends is the hardest part of teaching reading. With Dragon I'm planning to play oral blending games before we move to written blending games. I saw someone else had blogged about doing that and thought it was a wonderful idea that would make that leap into blending a lot easier.
To that point, Happy Phonics was wondeful, but as Monkey got the hang of doing the CVC blends, I started to feel like I don't know what I'm doing. The program assumes that Mom knows something about phonics... and I didn't know any more than the most basic blends. Enter Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading. When I'd checked the book out of the library I'd rejected it because it was so painfully dry. But now I looked again, and I found that the program had something that I needed badly: an systematic approach to phonics. What rules to introduce when, and word lists for practicing the rules, as well as little phonetic stories for the student to read. I still didn't like the format that OPGTR suggests, so I changed it. The word lists I wrote out on 3x5 cards to play with file folder games and the HP games. Works like a charm, and takes about 5 minutes per lesson.


L: Silent E Machine. R: File folder game & word cards.

The other thing I do with OPGTR is a bit more involved, but since I'll be teaching more than one student with it I feel that it's worth my time. OPGTR has little stories that use the words from the lessons to give the student practice at reading. The book suggests using a sheet of blank paper to cover the extra text so it's not too overwhelming, and have the child read right out of the book. Phonics is probably the least favorite topic under study at our house, and I've have mutiny and tears if we did it that way, so I turn those little stories into little books. Over time, the collection has grown. I do not do this for every lesson. But enough to get some good reading practice.

Here's what I do:

Take 5-6 pages regular printer paper and 1 sheet colored cardstock. Hamburger fold them so the cardstock is on the outside.
Open them, and carefully sew down the fold. The color of your thread doesn't matter, and it doesn't have to be perfect. I generally make several of these at once, and often let Monkey choose the color of the covers.
When I'm ready to make the books, I get out OPGTR and count the lines. Sometimes it works out perfectly to match my pages, more often I have to add something to make it fit, or occasionally double up 2 sentences on 1 page. If a family name fits the rules, I usually substitute family names for the generic ones in the book. Monkey likes that, and I like anything that makes him more willing to read the little stories. If I have to add stuff, I usually add silly stuff as it is more fun to read that way. Or ducks. He likes to quack, so there's been lots of ducks in our stories.
Once the words are all worked out in my notebook, I write them into the book.
Last, I draw pictures. We're not talking about beautiful pictures, just stick figures with clothes on them, usually. Or sometimes I'll borrow from the Bob Books style. It's very minimalist, but it does take some time. However, Monkey is soooo much happier reading these little "illustrated" books that it's worth the effort to me. I want him to enjoy reading, but right now he thinks it's tons of work, where so much of the rest of school comes very easily. Those little stick figures make a huge difference in his willingness to put out the effort.

In addition to reading the story as we're doing the lesson, I use them to review old rules that we have already learned. There's some review, naturally, in the process of reading stories. But I think it makes a difference to go back and re-read the old stories too. Over time his fluency on the older books has really improved. Which is not the same as saying that he's fluent, not at this point yet. But we're not quite halfway through OPGTR, so I'm fine with that. When I asked around on my favorite message boards, it looked like it takes most people about 2 years to work through OPGTR. I think it's going to take us a little longer than that, unless he decides that it's important to him. Right now it's just not. But I'm OK with that. He knows the stuff that we've covered, and he's learning the new rules, even if he's not super enthusiastic at this point. But it's working. And it's thorough.

OPGTR uses very few sight words. If it can be taught phonetically, it is. I like that. English has a reputation for being very irregular (and is, compared to other languages I've studied), it's still largely a rules-based system. I've seen a variety of numbers for how "regular" English is, but 80-90% seems to be the consensus. Although I've been told that expecting my sons to learn phonics is "too much to memorize," it seems to me that it would be much harder to memorize enough vocabulary, as whole words, to read even close to fluently. And this very phonics-intensive instruction is working. Monkey can read any word that follows the rules we have covered, and has a small-but-growing collection of truly irregular sight words as well.

Happy Phonics puts things into a format that Monkey enjoys. Doing it in a games-based way allowed us to start much earlier than anything else I've seen would have. OPGTR holds my hand so that I'm confident that I'm not missing anything, and helps me put things into a logical order as we progress. I need that. The two of them together are just right for our family.

Peg People

2011-12-18T21:22:00.002-06:00

I've been looking around Pinterest, and found this really cute idea for little peg faries, just in time for a birthday party that Monkey got invited to. We had a fun time getting them ready, and the birthday girl loved them!

What's a Potter's Wheel?

2011-12-15T17:34:00.000-06:00

Today, the question as we're learning more about the Indus River people was, "What's a Potter's Wheel?" I'm clueless about how to explain that in words, so we found some movies.

Mohenjo-Daro and Some Critters

2011-12-13T16:55:00.002-06:00

We've been reading about the Indus River civilizations this week, and it's very interesting. Mohenjo-Daro is a fascinating mystery! In addition to the city itself, as we've been reading there's some other, slightly more mundane things we've come across that needed explanation so that Monkey would understand. I love You-Tube for this sort of quick clarification - and he loves that he gets to watch a little "movie" for school.

This one is an artist's idea of what Mohenjo-Daro may have been like.

This one shows a tour of the ruins.

When we were talking about water buffalo, Monkey was surprised they weren't water animals. Clearly we ought to look at some of those! This one includes a rhino as well, which is nice, because we read about them last week, but didn't go look for any clips.

And here are some domesticated water buffalo.

We also read about camels.

Art and Artists

2011-12-08T15:18:00.008-06:00

We're having another go at learning about art, artists, and drawing. I found a set of lesson plans that go with Drawing with Children, and they have made my life so much easier! I love the ideas in that book, but just could not figure out how to translate them into doing stuff with Monkey. Those lesson plans are wonderful. We're actually making (slow) progress now. And I'm OK with slow: it's so much better than none. One of the first things the lessons plans wanted us to do was make a notebook for our Great Artists Studies. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this until I saw this idea.

A "smashbook," where order is not so much a problem. One of the blogs I looked at said they'd created a table of contents by numbering the pages- but leaving the first 3 or 4 blank. I like that. Stuff goes in. Learning goes in, and gets remembered because we come back to the book from time to time. So we got those little composition books, and we're going to do it. A little at a time. In Baby Steps. Because small things add up, and it doesn't have to be a huge thing on any given day. It can wax and wane. We can do a whole bunch this week because making a collage to decorate the cover is fun, and then wane as we look at other things, but wax again when we find an interesting artist. And that's OK. Because in several months or even years, when it's done and the book is filled it will be much more than nothing. Which is what we're presently doing. Here are some ideas for what to put inside a Great Artists book.

I made this graphic to go on the cover of mine; Monkey just wrote on the lines on the front of the composition book. When they're done I'll come back and add pictures. But you can have this "teaser" for now. And if you like it, you can use it on your Great Artists notebook. Drop me a line if you do - I'd love to see pictures of your finished product!

There. The cover is finished. Here are some pictures of mine. Monkey put his name on his, so you'll have to imagine the cuteness. We looked through Usborne's Introduction to Art and picked interesting pictures, which I looked up online and printed out. Then we glued them on our decorated notebooks. And, because our printer ink is ~~very water soluble~~ runs if you look cross-eyed at it, I covered them with contact paper. This will also make the covers generally tougher, which is a plus for a book I'm hoping will be sticking around for a while.

Front cover.

Back cover.

Front cover detail

Pre-K/K at Home (part 1)

2011-12-05T09:53:00.002-06:00

A couple of friends have been asking me about doing preschool at home: what do I do? How do I know what to teach? This sort of thing. I thought that I'd write down what we did in doing pre-K and Kindergarten at home.

The first thing to do, in my opinion, is seek the Lord's blessing. The prophets have spoken very clearly about the critical importance of a mother's influence on her children, throughout childhood, but especially in those critical young years. President Benson was especially blunt about the importance of mothers for their preschool age children:

"It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men's theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother's influence. ... It is mother's influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child's basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother's loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother's influence and teaching in the home-and how apparent when neglected!" -Ezra Taft Benson (Ensign, Nov. 1981, p. 104)

In teaching Monkey, I found the distinction between preschool and Kindergarten to be relatively artificial. The primary difference was the amount of time we spent doing school in a week: as he got older, I expected more. But for the most part, we did the same stuff all along and it worked beautifully. I used preschool as a time to practice the skills that I need to do "real" school successfully, and so it was win-win all around. Here is what we did:

Talking

I do my best to speak to my children using adult language. If I don't think they understand a word, I stop and explain. I often talk my way through the day, explaining what I'm doing as we go.

"Turn off the television - half an hour of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood per day is plenty for any child under five. Talk, talk, talk - adult talk, not baby talk. Talk to her while you're walking in the park, while you're tiding in the car, while you're fixing dinner. Tell her what you're doing and why you're doing it. ('Now I'm going to send a fax. I put the paper face down and punch in the telephone number I'm calling... and then the paper starts to feed through like this.' 'I spilled flour on the floor. I'm going to get out the vacuum cleaner and plug it in. I think I'll use this brush. It's a furniture brush, but the flour's down in the cracks, so it will work better than the floor brush.') This sort of constant chatter lays a verbal foundation in your child's mind. She's learning that words are used to plan, to think, to explain; she's figuring out how the English language organizes words into phrases, clauses, and complete sentences."
The Well-Trained Mind, page 27

Read-Alouds

From the time he was a munchkin, I read out-loud to Monkey, and now to Dragon. The first thing I recommend reading is the scriptures. I used this chart to track our progress - and it went in the scrapbooks when we were done. It took more than 3 years to go through the Book of Mormon with Monkey for the first time. After that he wanted to read the stories of Christ's life, so we are now reading the Four Gospels. Although it takes a long time to complete the project, I think it's well worth it. I also started him on a scripture box as soon as he could talk well enough. That has been one of the best parenting decisions I ever made. I can't recommend it enough!

In addition to scripture, I try to read picture books to the boys every day. Sometimes I choose, mostly they choose. We snuggle and read on the couch, the floor, in their beds, and wherever. We read at the doctor's office, and I read to them over lunch. They get books as gifts at their birthday and Christmas and as rewards for good behavior. We let them choose books they want to bring home at the book store and the thrift shop, and I write their names in books that are theirs. I try to keep the picture books high quality books, but some twaddle has slipped in from time to time, and a few times it's even become a favorite. We've had a few books destroyed by pudgy baby fingers. We've had a couple books loved to death. We have several books that have been mended with packing tape, sometimes more than once.

"A torn book or two is a small price to pay for literacy." -Susan Wise Bauer

I also read chapter books to the boys. We are reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator right now. We don't do the chapter book every day, but I do try to get it in three or four times in a week. It has always worked best for us to do this reading while eating lunch or getting ready for nap time. We often snuggle under the covers and enjoy a chapter or two. I don't hesitate to drop a book that isn't a good fit; Monkey loved "The Secret Garden" but we dropped "An Incredible Journey" after only one chapter. When he was a baby, I read "Treasure Island" to him... but only the first half. Once I realized that the pirates were going to kill a bunch of people we set that one aside for a while. I love the 1000 Good Books list, and have found many old friends on there, and the new titles we've tried have been wonderful. If I can't think of anything to read, that's where I go.

When we read, I occasionally will stop and ask, "What's happening? Why did he do that? What do you think will happen next?" These questions check to see if Monkey understands, and they helped him to get ready to narrate when we started moving into late Kindergarten and early first grade work. I stop and explain any difficult vocabulary as we go along.

Nature Study

Charlotte Mason, an 18th century educator, was a huge proponent of nature study - going outside and observing and learning about the world, first hand. We do that, and I love it. In practice, this has been walks in the park, looking for "cool stuff." We've played around with magnifying glasses and binoculars, but mostly we just go look and see what we can see. My plan is for this to grow into a more focused thing, and to use a sketch book to record the "cool stuff" we find, but at the preschool level it's just getting outside. When we do this we often finish our walk at a playground.

For the first couple years, this was pretty much it, along with some finger painting. I need to feed the boys breakfast, so I'll come back later and write about what I did as they got older and preschool became more kindergarten-y.

Hope

2011-12-04T17:29:00.002-06:00

24 Hours: A Day of the Life

2011-11-29T16:11:00.041-06:00

I saw a number of "Day in the Life" posts at the beginning of the school year and thought they looked like fun, but I keep forgetting to do one. Since I remember it now, I'm starting RIGHT NOW and I'll finish tomorrow. Not the typical format, but it will get done! (I'll be back and make updates for the next 24 hours or so.)

4:00pm - I'm visiting teaching tonight and it's her birthday, so I'm making pumpkin bread to take her. The boys are both napping.

4:05 - I realize (A)this bread is not healthy and (B)it's making a huge batch and is difficult to stir. I should have done this in my mixer. Can't wait to taste it.

4:30 - I add ginger, even though it's not in the recipe. The batter is delicious. Then I have A Moment of Panic as I realize that I have no idea if I've got carseats or not: they were both in the van, which Daddy has taken to work. I make myself finish the bread before I look, so it will be baking. I'm trying to think up alternate plans, just in case. I almost forget to set the timer on the bread.

4:40 - Peek out the window; the carseat is there. I should have known Daddy would remember. Close the curtains because it's already dark, and turn on the Christmas tree.

4:45 - The dishwasher is running, but I realize I forgot a few things. Dragon wakes up. I wonder what he did with his other sock. Monkey is still sleeping. This is typical: he's older, but his naps are still regular and usually longer. I'll have to wake him up soon so we can discuss the rules (No saying, "Are you done yet" or anything like it) before we go Visiting Teaching. I also should feed the boys a snack.

5:10 - Finish reading some stories to Dragon. He's a tough audience, but we made it through 3 this time. I remind him again not to pinch. And again. I think it's time to wake Monkey up.

5:12 - Monkey comes downstairs before I can go up. We negotiate for good behavior while Visiting Teaching: if he doesn't complain or ask to leave he can earn an extra TV token. Then we have a snack. While the boys eat, I read some more of Gilgamesh. When Monkey is done he works on his coloring sheet. We stop and talk about the difficult vocabulary: lintel, enraged, Ishtar, and frieze are some of the words. We look at a picture in the Assyrian Art book I'm reading when the explanation of what a frieze is falls completely flat. I have him do mini-narrations to check his comprehension. It's pretty OK, and we talk about the parts he's fuzzy on.

5:38 - The bread is done (I hope) and not a minute too soon! We need to get on shoes and leave... as soon as I look up where she lives again.

5:45 - My sister calls to firm up plans for this weekend. I say, "Can you call me back in 2 hours??"

5:55 - On the road. We're more or less on time. The boys are awesome. They play with the toys and books we brought and I don't have to say anything to Monkey and only have to chase Dragon off the lady's tree once. (It's not fully decorated yet; that helps.)

6:55 - We finish the visit. I heap the praise on the boys for their awesomeness while we drive to Walmart.

7:07 - Arrive at Walmart. Spend a minute unloading all the toys and books from my purse so they don't arrest me for shoplifting. I didn't check my recipe, but I can kind of remember what it calls for. It's only been 2 years... what could go wrong?

7:30 - Back in the car with what I hope are all the ingredients I need for the cheesecake and also some deli chicken for dinner and some dish soap. Dragon is frantically signing, "more! more! more!" so I tell Monkey to pray on the food while I get rid of the cart and they dig in.

7:40 - Home again. Put Dragon in his high chair and he's happily working on chicken. I also give them both a bit of the pumpkin bread. It turned out good... except for the spots where I apparently didn't stir enough and there are nice white flour bits. Ouch. Not what I like to give away. Definitely in the mixer next time. But it's tasty. Since nap time went so long, we still have school to finish. I need to find my list for today and decide what's next.

8:30 - We've practiced sixes, fives, and fours (he'd done the others another day), which Monkey thought it was fun to join like trains, and then we added a few more elements to our Raptors lapbook. Dragon gets a diaper change. Now, we pause for a lightsaber battle. Monkey is ferocious, but I can take him! Dragon has a brand new saber too, but he hasn't quite figured out the game yet, so he's sort of milling around through the battle, but manages not to be a casualty.

8:40 - Dragon is picking up food off the floor and eating it (I just fed that kid!!) so I call a halt and sweep. Then lightsaber battles continue.

8:45 - Monkey is sent to get his jammies for a shower. Dragon and I place chase, do a few jumping-jacks (he's been watching us do PACE), and then settle in with the legos to play a few rounds of "baby towers." That is, I build, he destroys, and we both laugh.

9:00 - Monkey finally comes back with jammies. Dragon is throwing legos over the gate into the bathroom. It's very distracting, but they are having a ball. Dragon turns up with his brother's shirt on. We play more legos.

9:10 - The water is finally on. I go ~~wash Monkey's hair~~ supervise while Monkey washes his hair. I also remind him that he doesn't need permission to get out of the shower. Dragon needs some jammies, so I find those while I'm waiting for Monkey to finish up. He gets cute monkeys with bananas. I also pull up All About Birds' page on mallards and pick out a couple of mallard clips from YouTube. And remind Monkey to finish up.

9:50 - Time for scriptures and prayers. No, we're not doing it at the computer. "No pinching, Dragon. Soft touches." Don't pinch your brother either.

10:08 - We call Daddy. "Are you going to be home in time to tuck boys in?" It's going to be close. He says goodnight to the boys on the phone, just in case.

10:15 - Brush teeth, go potty. All that good stuff. We're doing the scripture boxes when Daddy gets home, and pause for hugs and kisses, then finish the box. Monkey asks for a story, so I tell him about Christ's birth, and then insist that he go to sleep. "No pinching, Dragon. Soft touches." Again.

10:55 - Back downstairs. Dragon is asleep; Monkey still is not. I still need to read scriptures myself and look at my plans for tomorrow.

11:38 - Looking at Pinterest for "just a minute" doesn't work so well. I need to get busy again and finish things up before bed.

11:45 - Finished reading my scriptures. I want to read the whole Old Testament, but it's hard. I started 2 years ago, and I'm still laboring my way through Numbers.

11:50 - List of school work for tomorrow is written out on a post-it. I think I need to go through my lesson plans and make some adjustments, but I'm going to have to pray about how much is the right amount of work for Monkey. If he didn't nap it wouldn't be a big deal, but the inconsistent amount of time to do our work is killing me - 2 hours naps, but only some of the time?! Blarg. I don't know how to plan for that. I'm turning off my computer, touching up the kitchen, and going to bed.

12:45am - We're going to sleep. It's a little later than we'd prefer, but not out of the ordinary.

1:15 - Dragon's fussing so I bring him to my bed. It's sooner than I'd hoped (he was starting to sleep through the night before he got bronchitis last month), but he'd had an impressively runny nose all day, so I'm not surprised. He's getting used to being weaned, and hardly fusses when I offer him a water cup rather than nursing. He seems restless.

1:45 - He's still restless, and coughing. We think the snot is bothering him and decide that he should sleep sitting up a bit. I take him downstairs and we settle in on my new chaise lounge. He seems more comfortable, snuggles in (I love that!) and falls right to sleep.

Sometime after 2:00 - I wake up because he's coughing a lot, and decide I want a bucket handy in case he pukes while we're on my new chair. As I'm getting up with him, he pukes. On me, all over himself, and on my chair. We head for the bathroom and I aim him at the pot. When he's done I check the damage, and decide to wake up Daddy. Dragon and I shower; Daddy takes care of the chair and the floor. I get the bathroom once we're done.

2:45 - We're headed back to bed. Dragon is playing and happy, until I make him go back to bed. He fights sleep for a few minutes, then drops into a very restless sleep. He wants his feet on me, but keeps kicking them around to get the blankets off. It's chilly! I try to recover him a few times, then give in to the inevitable. His sleepers should keep him warm. Now that my boy is doing better I am slightly miffed because I'd wanted to share a normal day, not a sick day!

8:22 am - Dragon wakes up. He's coughing and restless, but clearly still tired. I try to get him to go back to sleep. I'd really like some more sleep!

8:45 - I bring him downstairs to keep him from waking up Daddy. I sit down at my computer with him on my lap and his coughing eases, he snuggles in, and finally falls asleep again. I think sitting up is helping him, and Monkey will probably wake up soon, so I type one handed for a while, then go look at pinterest again. That seems like just the right amount of mental effort.

9:30 - Monkey's up. I send him back for pants, because he likes to sleep in shorts. While he's getting dressed, Dragon wakes up too. We're all hungry, so breakfast is next. I grab the scriptures to read to them while we eat our cereal and pumpkin bread.

10:30 - Breakfast is finished, Daddy's up, and we start doing math. Monkey loves it, so we usually do it first because it's an easy way to start. Today is "Math Lab," which means it's somewhat choose-your-own-adventure, and he chooses to play Skipbo.

11:00 - Daddy leaves to run some errands; we all wave goodbye, then return to the game. In addition to counting as we build piles, Monkey practices the partners of 5 to figure out how many cards he should draw. We use fingers to figure it out. It's easy; I don't think he really needs the fingers, but he likes them, so we keep using them.

11:15 - We finish our game. I probably should have made it just a touch shorter, but it went well anyway. Monkey wants to read some books, so we do. Dragon listens to most of the first one, then wanders off.

11:20 - I chase Dragon out of the tree. He brings me an ornament. He runs off with the globe and leans on the tree. It's cute. I chase him out of the tree. And try to read to Monkey about the Euphrates. Monkey's attention is wandering (with all these interruptions, who can blame him?). Dragon wants the wipes to pull out of the box, so I offer to let him empty the diapers from the basket instead. The tree is more interesting.

11:45 - I give Dragon some benedry to try to dry up the river that keeps flowing from his nose, and try to put him down for a nap. Monkey plays with legos. Dragon, having had more sleep than me, outlasts me, and I give up on the nap and get myself dressed. Monkey comes upstairs to see what's taking so long, so the boys play in their room for a couple minutes while I update the blog and put the ornaments back on the tree. "Only" the bottom half is mostly naked. I hear regular thumps, so I know they're not doing anything too interesting, just jumping around. I need a nap.

12:20 - Since the boys are still playing nicely, I look up the recipe for the pumpkin cheesecake their Daddy asked me to bake for this weekend, and get the ingredients out so they can warm up to room temperature. Monkey tells me that they're bored, so I grab Dragon and we start doing more school.

12:25 - The boys are both saying they're hungry, and Monkey wants to make a "Super Hero map, that requires 3 pieces of paper and some tape, and the white parts are going to be bridges." So I give him paper, tape, and markers, give both boys cheese, and try to figure out lunch. This starts with finishing putting away the groceries from yesterday. I got so distracted that I didn't even open the dark chocolate I bought. How did that happen? This oversight is corrected, and I enjoy a piece of Giradelli dark chocolate. I still don't know what's for lunch or when Daddy's coming home. But the chocolate is good. Think I'll have another. We'll practice reading after lunch.

12:35 - I'm still trying to clean the kitchen so I can think. Monkey has decided that the map is in his head, so he's done with his project, and heads back to the lego pile. Daddy comes home and shortly is at the legos too, playing with the boys and also playing referee. Even with him there, there is a lot of crabbing from Dragon and more than a little whining from Monkey. Naptime anyone? Oh, yeah. That food. I start making enchiladas.

1:00 - Monkey is putting cheese in the enchiladas for me, and Dragon falls asleep in his Daddy's arms. Once the food is in the oven we play "Build a Sentence" to practice phonics while it cooks.

2:30 - Lunch is over. Monkey's getting ready for his nap. Dragon wakes up from his. So much for mine; Daddy's got work to do - he's telecommuting, not off.

2:45 - I'm done tucking Monkey in for his nap. He's not happy about it, but he clearly needs it today. Dragon grabs my face, turns it to look at him, and signs, "More! More! More!" I give him enchiladas and he chows down while I sweep the floor and consider cleaning that nasty bathroom. I also need to look at the plans I neglected last night before I run out plans to do. That would be a problem. I need a nap.

3:15 - It's starting to get dark. I turn on the tree, but put off closing the curtains. Dragon's cough sounds awful, but at least he's eating nicely. He's supposed to be rechecked from his bronchitis next week. I call about moving up the appointment to tomorrow. 11:15 tomorrow morning? Yeah. I can do that.

3:45 - Snuggles and lightsaber battles... at the same time. But it makes Dragon happy. I like that.

Smart Ideas for Math

2011-11-22T14:11:00.000-06:00

I've been reading blogs and message boards and email list archives and there are some smart people out there with good ideas for teaching math! I'm collecting some of them here/.

I have saved a page in sore need of correction for a week later...did some teaching in the meantime...and handed the page back to the child for an "Oh, I get it now!" (Forum post)
Make a rod-shaped tube from a trimmed 3x5 card & play puzzle games. "This end is dark green. What color is the other end?" Or, "Both ends are pink, what color is in the middle?" (Sep. 2003)
To teach division or fractions, cut some string into sections about 1 foot long and tie them into loops. Then put some kind of counter evenly into the loops. (List archive)
A Goblin Gaitor math game for learning greater than/less than. (blog)
A place-value game where they roll the dice and trade in for 10s and 100s as needed, stopping to write the numbers every 60 seconds. (List archive)

There are so many good ideas out there - and math is way more fun than I ever imagined it could be!

Learning about Rosh Hashanah

2011-11-16T23:34:00.000-06:00

We learned about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as Joseph in Egypt last week, and this week we're still reading some of our extra books about Judaism. But some things are easier to learn with better pictures, and the shofar just needs some video, so we head to YouTube again. Amazing how educational that site is!

First, your basic overview. Lots of this was also in the book, Dance, Sing, Remember, that we're reading to learn about Jewish holidays.

The shofar is a long, twisted trumpet made from the horn of a sheep, and is traditionally blown at Rosh Hashanah.

And, because like any self-respecting holiday, there is food involved, we'll probably make some Challah - but next week because this week is a zoo, what with my brother coming home from his mission in 3 days. I think it would be fun to do this lady's braided Challah, but I think we'll let Monkey choose, and I'm betting he'll choose the one with the bird on it.

Placevalue and Writing

2011-11-16T20:11:00.002-06:00

I've discovered that 10 + 3 = 13 is a relatively difficult problem for Monkey at this point; he hasn't caught the concept of placevalue yet. Which isn't very surprising, since it's a pretty new idea, this writing of numbers and matching them with their correct meanings. I realized this as we were doing some problems at Khan Academy. I like a lot of things about Khan, but there isn't much explanation or practice in the arithmetic section. It jumps from single digit problems to triple digit with no in between, and relies heavily on number lines. But as a supplement, to see how he's doing, and what happens when I sit back and let him do his thing, it's wonderful. So now, we're working a bit on some of the ideas that I've realized are weak. I thought that I might share the lab sheet I made up for him. To use it, copy, then paste into your word processor. Let me know how it goes for you!

Browsing the Nominees

2011-11-16T14:20:00.000-06:00

My favorite blogs nominated for Best Homeschool Photo Blog

4 Little Men and Girly Twins
Wow, the pictures on this blog! When I grow up, I want to take pictures like this!

Aspire
A totally different feel, but so much fun. Love the Jedi pictures.

Finding Joy
I like this one. I like the peaceful quality to her photos.

Home is Where You Start From
She's got a fun variety of photos to look at.

Thought Breeds Thought

2011-11-14T23:56:00.004-06:00

Yes, she's talking about children. But it works with adults too.

Weekly Wrap-up

2011-11-12T00:45:00.002-06:00

Early in the week, we tried to get the last of our garden chores done before the snow came. It's been unseasonably warm, and it makes it feel like early fall, rather than late fall. I even briefly contemplated moving some strawberry plants, but decided that it's too late. Good thing I left them where they are: now we have snow on the ground. But it was a balmy 50F the day we worked in the garden.

Our Little Golden Dragon is struggling to get over a relapse of his bronchitis that he had a while back, but he's a trooper and is mostly cheerful most of the time. He and Monkey enjoyed an art project this week. They painted egg cartons, and Monkey has ambitions to turn his into a caterpillar. This is one of several crafts that Monkey thought up this week. It's fun to see him gaining enough confidence to think up his own crafts and then get them started! These caterpillars, being a painting craft, he had to ask for help. But one day this week I finished putting Dragon down for a nap and found him hard at work on a new folder game for us to use in phonics. We worked together to finish it off, then played with it right away. I need to find my contact paper and cover it, so that it will last through many games.

Speaking of phonics, it's going so well! We introduced the silent e this week, and Monkey had no problems with it. There for a while I felt like we were going sooo slowly, and wondered if we would ever get to the long vowel sounds, and now here we are! OPGTR actually breaks the silent e words into several lessons, but we covered a couple of them this week, in spite of not doing anything with it on Monday and Tuesday. We used a "magic e machine" (a cardstock frame we put the CVC words into to change the vowel sound) and his new folder game to practice. I just love hiding our phonics drill in games. We'd have fights over it every day if it wasn't for Happy Phonics and the other games we play!

In History, we covered Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as Joseph in Egypt. We also had a look at the royal burials in Ur, since that's where Abraham came from. We were working with the Scripture Storybooks the Church puts out, since SOTW doesn't quite match up. Ur is pretty interesting. We spent some time exploring Queen Pu-Abi's tomb. Monkey didn't know what a lyre is, so I found a youtube clip to show him. It's Anglo-Saxon, not Sumerian, but it's the same general idea, and was enough that the picture made sense to him. We talked about the cylinder seals they used, and a little of what they used them for, then we used the clay that was leftover from making our cuneiform tablets to make a cylinder for Monkey and put a little cuneiform on it. Unfortunately, it was a short night last night, and so when I was putting Dragon down for his nap I passed out too... and the cylinder was burned black. We may make another one. Which would be OK. Turns out they had holes in them to string them onto pins and wore them. So if we do it again we'll try to make a hole through the middle (a needle maybe?) to make it more accurate. He had a great time working the clay and made quite the collection of little balls and even a turret while he was "getting it soft." The Sculpey being hard didn't seem to bother him much! In any case, we had a good time looking at pictures of cylinders, checking out Queen Pu-Abi's cylinder, and later I did some reading about them too. Interesting stuff.

Here's his narration of the story of Joseph in Egypt. I'm thinking that we may look to see if Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is still on YouTube. A while back we watched it, since someone had helpfully put it all into a playlist.

Joseph was a righteous man. He taught his brothers about his dream, and then they sold him some Ishmaelites. They took him to Egypt. Potiphar bought Joseph. He was happy that he had Joseph and he put him in charge of his whole house. Potifer’s wife tried to make him kiss her, but Joseph didn’t, and he ran away from her. Then Potiphar’s wife told Potiphar that he kissed her. He put Joseph in jail.

He got out of jail when the king put him in charge of his whole land. Joseph was supposed to give them food for the seven years of no food. His brothers came to buy food. He told them that he was Joseph because they didn’t know it at first. He told them to come to Egypt. They did it.

Math is going awesome as well. Monkey's fine motor skills are starting to catch up a bit, so I started teaching him his numbers this week. Not too shabby, for the first official instruction. He decided that he likes the other kind of 4 - the one that's open on top - better than the one in the font, and I'm fine with that. In addition to learning to write the numbers, we continued to work on addition with sums to about 15. We also bumped into multiplication, played with some inequalities, and did some dot-to-dots. The choose-your-own adventure style math that Miquan suggests is working out beautifully! He's requesting certain types of sheets, which makes me happy since he's practicing his facts happily, and it makes him happy because he gets to choose what he wants. His choices are based on the decorations, which makes this very easy right now! We even discussed negative numbers just a little bit, courtesy of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, our current read-aloud: If Grandma Georgina is 78, and she eats 4 pills that each take 20 years from her life, how old is she? Why did she disappear? We used a number line, and it took 2 tries to explain it, but I think he followed the logic of the negative numbers. He wasn't that interested, which is fine, but I think he got the concept. I like that.

Other than that, the main excitement in my week was getting nominated for the Homeschool Blog Awards - super exciting! (I'm under Variety and Methods.) How was your week?

1000 Gifts

2011-11-10T00:17:00.000-06:00

I don't know if I can get 1000 on the blog before the end of the month, but here goes. I'm counting my blessings.If I can find the time for the blogging, it shouldn't be hard; there's so many I don't know where to start. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Medicine. Dragon got bronchitis about a month ago. He got mostly better, but then relapsed a couple days ago and we hauled him back to the doctor. And came home with 4 prescriptions. I've never seen our pediatrician look so serious in the 5 years we've been seeing him. Two days later, Dragon is nearly his old self again. Yep, I'm mighty grateful for medicine!

2. Snow. We got our first snow today. Monkey spent a good chunk of morning sitting and watching it fall.

3. Books. Nonfiction. Fiction. Comics. Dictionaries. But especially...

4. Scripture. The Bible. The Book of Mormon. I love that we have an open cannon. I love the the Lord hasn't said, "That's all you get, no more." I love that He loves us enough to give us more of His word from time to time.

"Scriptures are like packets of light that illuminate our minds and give place to guidance and inspiration from on high. They can become the key to open the channel to communion with our Father in Heaven and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ."
-Richard G. Scott, "The Power of Scriptures"

5. My Warm Coat. With the snow here, I'll be putting in the liner. I love to be warm. And, being warm, I'm discovering that...

6. Outside in Winter is a lovely place.

7. Clean Water. And it's easy to get to. I read about the Church's efforts to bring clean water closer to homes in Africa and realize what a blessing hot and cold running water is.

8. Visiting Friends in NC. We went a couple weeks ago, and I've got some great pictures - but haven't gotten them on the blog yet. It was an awesome visit and I'm so glad we went!

9. My Husband. He's my best friend!

10. A Warm House. Did I mention that I like to be warm?

There. 10 isn't much, if I'm going to make it to 1000, but it's a start. And, it being late, it's going to have to do for tonight.

Flamingos are Cool

2011-11-09T23:02:00.000-06:00

I'm Nominated!!

2011-11-09T16:36:00.003-06:00

I noticed this morning that the nominees for the Homeschool Blog Awards have been posted, and shortly after realized that I've been nominated! In two categories! (Best Methods Blog and Best Variety Blog) The voting's barely begun, but I feel like I've already won, just by being nominated! Thanks, guys! I can't wait to check out all the cool blogs and vote.

Sunday Scripture

2011-11-06T23:17:00.000-06:00

...faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.
-Ether 12:6

Birds of Prey Lapbook

2011-11-01T17:19:00.000-05:00

We're just about done studying animals for now, and I offered Monkey the option of doing a lapbook for birds of prey, since they are his favorite. He thought that was a good idea, so I'm gathering up the parts and pieces I'll need. Since we spent so much time on them, and this is intended to be a review activity, I'm planning to do a larger book than we've done for our first two. He goes back to look at the frog lapbook we did, and thus it gets reviewed and remembered better than it would otherwise have done - I like that. And he likes to look at his completed work. Lapbooks, as a type of narration, make me happy.

Birds of Prey lapbook parts - they have a great cover sheet, and I Printed several of their lapbook elements.

We found this great owl mosaic idea that I think we might have to try; it's right up his alley!

I printed several of the elements from this owl lapbook site.

I also printed some of the eagle lapbook elements.

Wish us luck! This will probably take some time to put it all together, but I'll see if I can't get pictures posted when we have it done.

Classical Homeschooling Carnival #20

2011-10-31T23:36:00.001-05:00

Hello! Welcome to another Classical Homeschooling Carnival! I'm so glad you could come! Here are our entries for this Halloween edition:

AnnieKate, of Tea Time with Annie Kate, shares some of their Favorite Living History Authors. She mentions Laura Ingalls Wilder, a favorite of ours, and then goes on to list a whole slew of folks I'm going to have to check out. Looks like there's some good reading out there!

Kristen enjoys a little mathematical irony in her post, Ecstasy in Math, at Teaching Stars.

Photo credit

Here at Baby Steps, I wrote Beautiful Math about some awesome things to do in math that I'd never really considered might actually be math before.

Melanie shares her efforts to get their third foreign language - Chinese - up and running in their school, with tips on what did and did not work for them in Learning Chinese Mandarin as a Second or Third Language over at Mel's Mouthful on Mothering.

That's it for this time - but don't forget to come back next month and enter your own post in our carnival, as well as read what others have shared with us. You can browse the previous editions of the carnival either by using the index, or by looking around here on Baby Steps. I hope you enjoyed the carnival, and thank you to our contributors!

Nature Study for a Patch

2011-10-31T17:13:00.002-05:00

We recently discovered that the state parks have a program where kids can earn a patch. Way cool! My husband has infected us, and now we're a bunch of patch geeks. Monkey was so excited, because he earned a patch that is his alone - none of the rest of us are the right age to get it. It took 2 relatively intense days of doing guided nature study with their booklet, but he got the patch!

Self-Reliance and Preparedness

2011-10-28T09:46:00.061-05:00

I was recently called as our ward's Welfare Specialist, and my Bishop has me working on a couple of projects for our ward that have got me studying the principles of welfare in the Lord's Church. I thought some of this stuff might be interesting to others, plus, a blog is a useful tool to organize it all as I get my thoughts straight in these projects, so here it is. There are some wonderful quotes, council, and promises associated with self-reliance.

What is Self-Reliance?

Self-reliance is the ability, commitment, and effort to provide the spiritual and temporal necessities of life for self and family. As members become self-reliant, they are also better able to serve and care for others.
Church members are responsible for their own spiritual and temporal well-being. Blessed with the gift of agency, they have the privilege and duty to set their own course, solve their own problems, and strive to become self-reliant. Members do this under the inspiration of the Lord and with the labor of their own hands.
-Handbook 2, section 6.1.1

Since the beginning of time man has been counseled to earn his own way, thereby becoming self-reliant. It is easy to understand the reason why the Lord places so much emphasis on this principle when we come to understand that it is tied very closely to freedom itself. -Marion G. Romney, "The Celestial Nature of Self-Reliance," October 1982 General Conference, emphasis added.

President David O. McKay said, “Let us … realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that [the] power to work is a blessing, that love [of] work is success” (True to the Faith, comp. Llewelyn R. McKay, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, p. 287), Quoted by Franklin D. Richards in "Personal and Family Financial Preparedness, April 1979 General Conference.

ProvidentLiving.org breaks self-reliance and family well-being into several topics: employment, finances, gardening, home storage, physical health, social and emotional strength, combating pornography, education, and emergency preparedness.

Doctrinal Basis of Self-Reliance

In modern revelation, the Lord has given us these commandments: “Verily I say unto you, concerning your debts—behold it is my will that you shall pay all your debts” (D&C 104:78). And again: “Pay the debt thou hast contracted. … Release thyself from bondage” (D&C 19:35).

President Joseph F. Smith advised the Saints to “get out of debt and keep out of debt, and then you will be financially as well as spiritually free” (In Conference Report, Oct. 1903, p. 5).
-Franklin D. Richards, Personal and Financial Family Preparedness, April 1979 General Conference

In 1936 the First Presidency outlined a welfare plan for the Church. They said: “Our primary purpose was to set up … a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people to help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principle of the lives of our Church membership” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1936, 3). -Handbook 2, section 6.1

“If ye are prepared ye shall not fear” (D&C 38:30).

Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work –Exodus 20:9

“Thou shalt not be idle; for he that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer.” [D&C 42:42.]

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven, upon which all blessings are predicated, and no man will get the blessing without fulfilling the law [see D&C 130:20–21]. I wish to impress upon the Latter-day Saints that we get in this life what we work for, and I want to urge every Latter-day Saint to be a worker.
-Heber J. Grant, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church - Heber J. Grant, Work and Self-Reliance.

Why do you think the Lord has given us these commandments? Why is it important for us to work for what we receive? How can failure to be self-reliant affect us individually? as families? in our communities and nations?

Self Reliance is an Act of Faith

As in any area where the Lord gives us direction, obedience to the council given about self-reliance is more about faith than it is about anything else. Wherever the Lord gives commandments he opens a way to obey. This is true with self-reliance and preparedness as well. As the prophets and scriptures have taught, the distinctions between "spiritual" commandments and "temporal" commandments are artificial, and thus not useful. If we have the faith to begin to increase our self-reliance then the Lord will teach us the things we need to succeed.

Preparedness is Like Noah's Ark

In his teachings, Paul said:

“By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen … prepared an ark to the saving of his house.” (Heb. 11:7.)

President Kimball gives us this insight to Noah and the ark:
“As yet there was no evidence of rain and flood. … His warnings were considered irrational. … How foolish to build an ark on dry ground with the sun shining and life moving forward as usual! But time ran out. … The floods came. The disobedient … were drowned. The miracle of the ark followed the faith manifested in its building.” (Faith Precedes the Miracle, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1972, pp. 5–6.) ...

I wonder how many Saints will be able to withstand the disaster of their own personal flood by showing faith in the advice of modern prophets and building an ark of family preparedness.
-Loren C. Dunn (70), Building Bridges of Faith, April 1981 General Conference

“The revelation to store food may be as essential to our temporal salvation today as boarding the ark was to the people in the days of Noah” -Elder Ezra Taft Benson (“Prepare Ye,” Ensign, Jan. 1974, 69).

Blessings of Self-Reliance

In 1941 the Gila River overflowed and flooded the Duncan Valley in Arizona. A young stake president by the name of Spencer W. Kimball met with his counselors, assessed the damage, and sent a telegram to Salt Lake City asking for a large sum of money.
Instead of sending money, President Heber J. Grant sent three men: Henry D. Moyle, Marion G. Romney, and Harold B. Lee. They visited with President Kimball and taught him an important lesson: “This isn’t a program of ‘give me,’” they said. “This is a program of ‘self-help.’”
Many years later, President Kimball said: “It would have been an easy thing, I think, for the Brethren to have sent us [the money,] and it wouldn’t have been too hard to sit in my office and distribute it; but what a lot of good came to us as we had hundreds of [our own] go to Duncan and build fences and haul the hay and level the ground and do all the things that needed doing. That is self-help.”
By following the Lord’s way, the members of President Kimball’s stake not only had their immediate needs met, but they also developed self-reliance, alleviated suffering, and grew in love and unity as they served each other. -Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Providing in the Lord's Way, Ensign, Nov 2011, emphasis added

Things We Ought To Do

“We encourage you to grow all the food that you feasibly can on your own property. Berry bushes, grapevines, fruit trees—plant them if your climate is right for their growth. Grow vegetables and eat them from your own yard. Even those residing in apartments or condominiums can generally grow a little food in pots and planters. … Make your garden as neat and attractive as well as productive. If there are children in your home, involve them in the process with assigned responsibilities” -Spencer W. Kimball (“Family Preparedness,” Ensign, May 1976, 124, emphasis added).

“I quote with pleasure … from Lord Bulwer Lytton: ‘What man wants is not talent, it is purpose; not power to achieve, but the will to labor.’ Samuel Smiles has said: ‘Purposes, like eggs, unless they are hatched into action, will run into decay.’
-Heber J. Grant, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church - Heber J. Grant, Work and Self-Reliance.

The practice of coveting and receiving unearned benefits has now become so fixed in our society that even men of wealth, possessing the means to produce more wealth, are expecting the government to guarantee them a profit. Elections often turn on what the candidates promise to do for voters from government funds. This practice, if universally accepted and implemented in any society, will make slaves of its citizens.
We cannot afford to become wards of the government, even if we have a legal right to do so. It requires too great a sacrifice of self-respect and in political, temporal, and spiritual independence.
-Marion G. Romney, The Celestial Nature of Self-Reliance, Oct 1982 General Conference

There is a spirit growing in the world today to avoid giving service, an unwillingness to give value received, to try to see how little we can do and how much we can get for doing it. This is all wrong. Our spirit and aim should be to do all we possibly can, in a given length of time, for the benefit of those who employ us and for the benefit of those with whom we are associated.
The other spirit—to get all we can, and give as little as possible in return—is contrary to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
-Heber J. Grant, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church - Heber J. Grant, Work and Self-Reliance.

“I quote with pleasure … from Lord Bulwer Lytton: ‘What man wants is not talent, it is purpose; not power to achieve, but the will to labor.’ Samuel Smiles has said: ‘Purposes, like eggs, unless they are hatched into action, will run into decay.'

-Heber J. Grant, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church - Heber J. Grant, Work and Self-Reliance.

The Tower of Babel and Brother of Jared Lapbook

2011-10-22T00:04:00.005-05:00

We're be switching chapters six and seven in the Story of the World, because the Tower of Babel(ch. 7) ought to come before Joseph in Egypt(ch.6). While we do Babylon, the Ziggarauts, and the Tower of Babel, we'll also add in the Brother of Jared from Book of Mormon history. Here are some of the resources I've found to do all that, as well as some lapbook elements I made for a Brother of Jared lapbook.

Primary lesson: The Jaredites are Lead to the Promised Land

Brother of Jared flannel board pieces from the Friend.

Brother of Jared coloring page

Art: Brother of Jared selecting stones

Art: Sawest Thou More Than This?

Here is the Tower of Babel accordion book lapbook element that I made up. According to this Science Fair site, it's thought that it could be the Tower of Babel, so that's the drawing that I'm using. If you'd like to use it, feel free to right-click. It should copy/paste into your favorite editor nicely.We'll also include the Ziggaraut in our Book of Centuries, by printing this again but cutting off all but the last rectangle.

The second lapbook element I made Is a little fish book. I plan to have Monkey do a section for the foods the Jaredites took with them on their journey. We'll cut them out and connect them with a brad, the way the "Frog Facts" book is done on this completed book we did. This element should fit on a regular piece of paper, so click it, then copy/paste into your word processor. This set, I printed on cardstock, so it would stand up to the turning and use a little better.

The Last thing I did was a representation of the barges, to be folded into a "matchbook." Fold the top down and the bottom up and the boats should be right side up when you flip it over. I also printed out smaller copies to put into our Book of Centuries near the entries we'll be putting in for Hammurabi and the Ziggaraut. The timing isn't exact, but so much of the timing of when precisely things happened this far back into the Ancients is educated guesstimates that it doesn't bother me (too much). Though the dates on the pages we'll be using are definitely guesswork, the sequence of events should be correct,and I think the value of putting sacred history right in there with the secular history is pretty high.

Weekly Wrap-up: the sick, rainy one

2011-10-20T16:08:00.000-05:00

This little cutie has been pretty miserable all week. I figured that was long enough and took him in today, then we stopped at our favorite pharmacy and brought home a collection of medicines to help him feel better. I'm looking forward to that "feel better" part! Though he's such a sweetie, even feeling rough. With him feeling icky, and it's been raining, we didn't really get outside all week. Everyone is a little stir-crazy, but some weeks are like that.

We finally have success with a lapbook! Monkey did a frog lapbook. This is the front and back sides, below that is the inside. The folder is hole-punched, and I trimmed the top and bottom just a bit, so it will fit in our science binder with all the rest of his work. He's pretty pleased with it - particularly that "Frog Facts" book that spins. I think he'll like this sort of thing even better when he can read the stuff himself. He asked me to read it to him over and over.

This week, in history, we were reading about ancient agriculture, and the book was talking about the benefits of shattering vs. non-shattering wheat. And Monkey wasn't getting it. We clearly needed something a little more hands-on than what we were getting from the book alone. So I drew a picture, so he'd know what a stalk of wheat looked like. Then, I took a little bit of our wheat kernels and dropped them on the floor. The mat was in need of sweeping, so I dropped them there, and I asked Monkey to pick them up. He thought it was pretty funny. We talked about how, if we had lived in those times, it might have been one of his jobs to help pick up the wheat kernels that fell so that our family could eat. He thought playing with legos sounded nicer, but now I was pretty sure that he was understanding the material, and understanding what a good thing it would be to start to have wheat that would stay on the stalk!

Another thing that is going extremely well this week is math. This week is the first week that we're doing more, officially, with the cuisenaire rods than just playing with them. And I love them more each time we have them out! This sheet is similar to one that Math Expressions uses: you take turns dropping a paperclip or something (today it was a Power Ranger) on a problem. Then you solve it, and each person has a wheel they color the answer on. First person to color all their spaces "wins." Monkey has asked for these "water wheels" for three days running now. I'm OK with that: they're great practice on his addition facts. And, since he's doing so well with the regular stuff, we're starting to explore "tricky" ways to do things. I was so pleased when the second problem he made up ended up being 8+1=3+6!

Making My Shopping-Menu

2011-10-19T00:26:00.000-05:00

A friend asked me, would I please explain what I do to plan my menus? Sure. Here it is.

I start by printing out the form I made. I've got a file I made up in Word. The menu goes down one column, and all the stuff I buy on a regular basis is in the second column. I also grab a highlighter and a pen.

Then comes the hard part: actually making the menu. I write out 2 weeks of meals, lunch and dinner. We generally just have cereal for breakfast, so that's a no-brainer. But I mark in the left margin when we're having company, when we're traveling, and anything else that I know about that will affect menu-planning, and then I go through and figure out what we're going to eat. This is easily the hardest part of the whole process.

When I know what we're eating, then I take my highlighter and mark the things that we'll need on the list, and write in any odd items at the bottom. Normally, this doesn't take very long at all, and I often go through and do it as I make the menu, so by the time I finish that chore the list is 90% made too. I always read through it, just to make sure I haven't missed anything. Sometimes I mark which stores at which I plan to get the various items (I regularly shop at 3-4 to get the best prices. It sounds excessive, but it sure makes the money go further). Then I fold it in half.

With my list folded in half, it fits better in my pocket for going to the store. Plus, it's easier to look at. But, if I get to the store and bell peppers are on sale, I can flip it over, make a quick adjustment to the menu, and feed my husband one of his favorite foods: fajitas. Having the menu right there isn't a big deal... except for when it is. As I go along, I scratch off the stuff I bought, just like a regular list, only I ignore anything that's not highlighted: it's not "on" the list. When I get home, I flip it over and stick it on the fridge.

At this point, I don't have to think about it: I just make whatever's on the list. And, if I need to swap things around a bit the meals I have foods for is all right there, so even that's not very hard.

And that is how I do my menus. Thanks for asking!

Random Stuff

2011-10-18T23:50:00.001-05:00

Item #1:
I was thinking I'd like to be Red Riding Hood for Halloween. At this point, it's not going to be for this year, but I did find this pattern for a chemise that would be a great start to the costume. Plus, it's about the easiest thing ever to make. The hard part seems to be finding a pattern for the overdress. I'm thinking something like this. Only, not $200. I don't have that to spend on a costume.

Item #2:
I've been reading the Gospels to Monkey, and this week we're working our way through Luke 1. Monkey asks good questions. Today, after he went to sleep, the Daddy and I got talking about Gabriel. Gabriel announced both John the Baptist and the Lord, and he also visited Daniel. Modern revelation tells us that Gabriel is Noah, and that Noah is second only to Adam, the Archangel. This got me to wondering, what is an archangel, anyway? Turns out, it's pretty interesting. I spent some time wandering around dictionary.com learning about it.

Archangel comes from the Greek, from "arkh," meaning first, ruling, or chief. So the archangel is the first, or ruling angel. Another interesting thing I discovered, in the Bible Dictionary this time, is that Michael means "who is like God." So when we say, "Michael the Archangel," we are saying, "The ruling angel who is like God." That's high praise!

Item #3:
I've been making yogurt. And when you make yogurt it's all goey, so I strain it. Thus, I have whey. If I strain it too much my yogurt becomes cream cheese, but that's not all bad. I don't want to waste the whey, so I've been looking at uses for it. And it turns out there's plenty. So far, I've tried it in bread. Works for rolls, leave it out of the pizza crust. I put some in rice - can't really tell a difference, but the whey isn't in my fridge any more, and it didn't get wasted. Also, my cookbook Nurturing Traditions has uses for whey. I haven't tried most of those. Apparently you can also make ricotta cheese out of it, but I haven't tried that yet. Or, another cheese called "zigger." One of these days I'm going to try making cheese too. But I need to figure out where to get this thing called, "rennet."

Item #4:
This clip amuses me.

Beautiful Math

2011-10-18T19:45:00.004-05:00

You can play with math. This has been a huge revelation to me. And it makes math interesting in a way that it hasn't ever been before.

I've been realizing that things like the Commutative Law in addition (it doesn't matter what order you add the numbers) are more than just strange words you occasionally bump into in the text; they're signals that something cool is going on, and there's probably an opportunity for play if I can just find it!

Turns out, once you realize they're there, opportunities for play in math aren't that hard to find. For instance, snowflakes. I love to photograph snowflakes, and I think cutting them out it tons of fun too. And it's almost time to build some to decorate the house. Turns out they can be more than fun decorations: they have math in them. And stories. Check out this symmetry lesson at Moebius Noodles. And, if your kid is up to such a thing, it bumps into multiplication too. And powers. How cool is that? (Don't skip the comments - there's a whole 'nuther fun activity, with story telling, in there. Plus, they have hints that there might be math in origami, so I googled that.

Oh yeah. There's math in origami. We'll have to come back to origami, because Monkey's still got pudgy munchkin fingers. But what fun!! Check this guys "bucky balls" out. Wouldn't that be a fun Christmas decoration! Little fishing wire... hang it from the ceiling. Yeah. I could be a geek. But it's art-math!

Part 2 has some interesting points about the properties of the bucky ball... and its relationship to a 20 sided die.

Anyway, here's a link for fractions with origami. Looks like fun. I actually printed that one out. (I think I might need a math games reference book if this keeps up...) Oh, cool, there's a whole site on origami in the elementary education classroom! OK, so it looks like they want you to buy their book to get the really good stuff (though they do offer a whale lesson, and if you email them they'll send a 101 Ways to Use Origami in the Classroom) and it looks good enough that I put it on my wish list at Amazon. Though why anybody thinks I'd pay $999 for a used origami book is beyond me!! That's not the only option Amazon has, happily. Plus, the suggested books people buy with it also look like a lot of fun. (If you decide to peek, I'd love it if you'd use my affiliate link.)

Here's another upper-grade origami/math book, from the same folks as the Miquon books that are working so nicely for us. Grade 7-11... we're not there yet, but it looks like such fun! Slip the activities in there between other math for a break? I hope my kids think it's as interesting as I do.

Volume = LOUD

2011-10-17T14:44:00.002-05:00

Loud, but enthusiastic today as he was practicing his memory work. I think we'll have to work on the "polished performance" part some...

In case you didn't quite catch what he's saying, here's the words to the poems.

Caterpillar
by Christina Rosetti

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry
Take your walk
To the shady leaf or stalk.

May no toad spy you
May the little bird pass by you
Spin and die
To live again a butterfly.

Cottleston Pie
by A.A. Milne

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie"

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie
A fish can't whistle and neither can I
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie"

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie
Why does a chicken? I don't know why!
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie"

Teaching the Reformation

2011-10-14T16:20:00.001-05:00

We're doing the Ancients this year in history, so we're not to the Reformation - yet. But reading Fire in the Bones: William Tyndale, Martyr has made me aware of the sacrifices that the reformers made so that we could read the scriptures in comfort and safety. Although I'd heard of the Inquisition, I'd somehow entirely missed what it was about. I had no idea that people were burned at the stake for possessing and reading the Bible! I don't know a lot about it yet, but I'm learning. And next year, Monkey will too.

Cocoa, at Chocolate on my Cranium, is doing the Reformation with her kids right now. And hers a little older than mine, but she's gathered together a wonderful list of resources on the Reformation, mainly from the manuals and magazines put out by the Church, that she's sharing. I can't wait to dig into some of them myself!

Downy Woodpecker

2011-10-14T15:54:00.000-05:00

Car Games

2011-10-12T16:59:00.004-05:00

We just got back from a 6-day roadtrip (Hi, Jenny!!), and of course we played some car games to keep the drive from feeling quite so long. Here are the results:

State License Plates:
Florida                                        Georgia                                 Mississippi
Ohio                                            North Carolina                    Iowa
California                                   New York                             Arizona
Idaho                                         Connecticut                         Kentucky
Washington                             Missouri                              New Jersey
Michigan                                  Oregon                                 Alabama
Indiana                                     New Mexico                         Tennessee
Illinois                                      Maine                                    Minnesota
Wisconsin                              West Virginia                       South Carolina
Kansas                                    Vermont                                Maryland
Virginia                                    Montana                               Utah
Pennsylvania                         Colorado                               Nebraska
Louisiana                               Massachusetts                     Montana
Oklahoma                             Colorado                                South Dakota
New Hampshire                    Nevada                                   Wyoming

Other License Plates:
Manitoba
Ontario
Washington DC
US Government

For it being the middle of October, and all the public schools in session, I don't think this is too shabby of a list! I did think it odd that there wasn't a better representation of Canadian guests: other trips this long have shown us most or all of the Provinces. Perhaps because they are also in school, we didn't see as many of our neighbors to the North. We also made note of vanity plates, which was a new list for me, and one that I think I'll be making a habit of doing in the future!

Vanity Plates
ICANDI                                BOBBIN3                          IGUANA8
JABA                                   JAG XJL                            JEPR
ME ME ME                        WIN WIN                           EREN
CU RACN                             BBS                                   SN1PS
NH OMFS                           PIZZAZZ                          MEGLET
LV2MNBK                          JAG                                    2 N JOY
SIR OWL                             TWIN 1                              KENEDY 4
SAAD                                 THE VOLS                         CRN 79
7 R                                        FRKNRCN                         RUNRBUG
BREZEEE                            GILVSJT                            JAG DADY
4 SCUDR                             NATO 16                          FNFAB1
SARRIS                               PODGE 4                          AMP 1
TEDYBUR                          NOJZFST                         NEW MINT
MOMANS2                       S MUERTE                        X PS1 X
JIMBO 52                           MAX THIS 1                    COOKN IT
ME BRAT 1                       NERZ1                               DA MASK
LA PRINCSA                    BEAR DN                          WD2 N4W
MR WB 5                          MR ZIP                               GIDEON
HK3                                    JEWEL                                NANEE
CAPTTED                        PITURA

The Chicago area had an unusual density of vanity plates: we probably got about half of the plates as we went through that area. Made me wonder if they are less expensive in Illiniois? We also though of a plate that we may get ourselves at some point... no, I'm not giving it away!

We also kept track of weird/interesting stuff we saw. Here are the highlights:

2 empty white lawn chairs, set up on the side of the highway like they were watching a parade
a large windfarm. We estimated that there were probably 500+ windmills, and they weren't small ones either!
a semi trailer that was hard-topped for the first 1/3 of the trailer, then soft topped the rest of the way back. It had no marks to give us clues about what they might be carrying.
a large green dragon, with little tiny wings. I guessed it was around 2 stories tall.
"Isothermal" Community College
cotton fields, ready to be harvested
1/2 hay bale laying on the highway
hot tub on a pickup
yard with a 2-hole golf course
sign: "Possible Wildlife in the Road"
watertower painted like a rainbow hot air balloon
"Hungry Mother State Park" (guess the Daddies had enough to eat??)
sign: "Big Musky Bucket"
falling plane - we thought it was remote control...
burned and melted semi cab - gone to the level of the headlights
Binary Odometer: 111010 (58)
Binary Odometer: 111111 (235)
Big Crane: the top was popping out of a quarry on I-80 that's around 2 miles deep. BIG crane.
Max's Cheese castle - with a castle shaped building

My family started keeping a list of roadkill sightings when we were headed out West one year and there was an unusually large number of them on the side of the road. Funny thing was, we saw them in the first state we traveled through, and then everyone else on that 1500 mile drive had them cleaned up. This time I also noticed that there was a definite difference between the way that one area to the next was able to keep their roads cleaned up.

Roadkill:
UFO*: 19
Racoon: 12
Skunk: 3
Rabbit: 2
Deer: 3
Bear
Squirrel
Beaver
Wolf
Fox

UFO = unidentified flattened object

Other bits of stuff we kept track of:

Lowest gas price: $3.11/gal
Tunnels: 5

It was a good trip!

The Lord is my Shepherd

2011-10-08T23:10:00.003-05:00

Weekly Wrap-up: Sargon the Great

2011-10-07T19:24:00.028-05:00

We started out looking back at Sumer/Mesopotamia in history this week, with chapter 5 of Story of the World. This was Monkey's narration:

Mesopotamia is the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates river. It’s called Sumer. They all had their own king and their own set of armies. Then the Great One, Sargon, came and he fought over fifty cities. He won. He made them follow him instead of their own king. He sent his army to live in those cities. He made a military dictatorship, which is something that you do to make everybody have to go with listening to the army.

We also finished up some of the Egyptian stuff that's been pushed off to the side. Like this documentary I found nearly a month ago. We finally watched it.

Monkey's doing great with reading /sh/, which makes me happy. Next week, I believe, is /ch/. It seems like he's really getting the hang of this now. Once, doing a lesson a week seemed like it was pushing my luck. Now, I've been feeling like we could do them a little faster. We may try it, but I don't want to go so fast that he doesn't get adequate practice as we go along. We're so close to the long vowels... I can almost taste it. I'm sooo looking forward to the time when he's got enough vowels sounds and combinations that he's suddenly able to read the picture books that are all over our house! I'm beginning to think that it will probably be relatively sudden too: so many books are based on sight words, and once we learn the phonics rules that cover them he'll suddenly have a world of books available to try out.

We tried again to make a lapbook, this time a frog lapbook, which we did instead of doing a narration. We used elements of several different lapbooks I found. Oddly, the 3 books about frogs we have don't talk at all about what eats them, so we had a hard time finding that information to include in our finished product. We used a coloring sheet from our Dover Reptiles and Amphibians coloring book for the cover. We also watched a few clips of frogs singing; I was amazed at the variety of songs!

Frogs

2011-10-05T16:15:00.000-05:00

A Safeguard and Protection

2011-10-02T23:51:00.003-05:00

After listening to Brother Bednar's talk in Conference I wanted to find a way to help Monkey begin to learn to love family history work. Although the talk was primarily addressed to youth, Brother Bednar also specifically included children in his remarks. Then, after I found another clip (below) on lds.org, my husband and I became even more determined to find a way to make this happen.

I will hardly ever ask the question, "Are you preparing to go on a mission?" I will ask the question, "Are you worthy to be in the temple? And will you be next year? And will you be the year after that? Are you doing the research in your own family, and helping other people with their research?"

That, for a young person, in the wickedness of the world in which we live today, is one of the greatest safeguards against the temptations of the adversary.

-David A.Bednar

A safeguard against the temptations of the adversary; protection from the wickedness of our world.

We need that.

We need to protect our children so they can grow up to the Lord! Now that he says it, it makes perfect sense that the temple would offer that protection to our children and youth. Of course the temple will draw my children closer to the Lord! Funny, President Hunter invited us to make the temple the great symbol of our membership, but in teaching my son I never thought to invite him to do the same.

OK. Now what. My big boy doesn't read yet. Not enough, anyway. And the little one not at all. (Though he does point at my alphabet strips and say, "That-- me!") How can I involve such little ones in family history and temple work? Obviously neither one can do real research just yet.

Things we can do

Tell ancestor stories.
Make an "Ancestor Book" - this would be good for long, "boring" Sundays, or for Family Home Evenings.
If I get names ready maybe they can help print and organize the temple cards
With (a lot of) help, Monkey could put dates into PAF after a temple trip
We could find space for an "Ancestor Map" and mark where they lived
We can take our digital recorder to Nana & Grandpa's house & ask them for stories

What else? How can we help our children do this?

Sunday Scripture

2011-10-01T23:47:00.003-05:00

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23

Exotic Music

2011-09-30T19:13:00.000-05:00

This afternoon Monkey asked me, "What's a gong?" We ran across the word in phonics. I explained, but a gong must be heard to understand, so when we were done reading we visited YouTube. Turns out there's quite a bit of exotic music on there, and we had a good time.

Sunday Scripture

2011-09-24T23:32:00.004-05:00

And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens.

Enos 1:4

It Strengthens My Resolve

2011-09-24T23:28:00.003-05:00

... to stay home. Even were we to not homeschool, this council is crystal clear:

One of the great tragedies of our day is the confusion in the minds of some which would cause mothers to go to work in the marketplace. Satan, that master of deceit, would have us believe that when we have problems with our children, the answer may be a nicer home in a finer neighborhood, that they might have their own bedroom, or better quality clothes, and maybe their own car. Satan would have us believe that money or the things money can buy are more important in the home than mother.

Now there are some mothers with school-age children who are the breadwinners of their family and they must work; they are the exception. Fathers and mothers, before you decide you need a second income and that mother must go to work out of the home, may I plead with you: first go to the Lord in prayer and receive his divine approbation. Be sure he says yes. Mothers with children and teenagers at home, before you go out of your homes to work, please count the cost as carefully as you count the profit. Earning a few dollars more for luxuries cloaked in the masquerade of necessity or a so-called opportunity for self-development of talents in the business world, a chance to get away from the mundane responsibilities of the home these are all satanic substitutes for clear thinking. They are counterfeit thoughts that subvert the responsibilities of motherhood. As you count the costs of mother working out of the home, please consider the following:

A mother gone when her children need her most or one who is too tired from a day spent in employment. Far better for a boy or girl to go to school in last year's shirts or hand-me-down dresses that are clean even though not in the height of fashion and come home to find mother there, than for a boy or girl to go to school in finer and newer clothes and come home to a new TV or a baby-sitter because Mother is away working.
-H. Burke Peterson, CR, Apr. 1974, p. 43

Classical Homeschooling Carnival #19

2011-09-23T00:04:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the latest edition of the Classical Homeschooling Carnival! We have a number of fun and inspiring posts this time around. Check them out:

LITERATURE

Delightful Children's Books has a rather extensive collection of books this time, in the wrap-up of her globally themed event, Read Around the World. Looks like they had a great time!

Nadene and her kids are having a blast Playing with Poetry - ideograms, to be precise - at Practical Pages.

Photo courtesy of Delightful Children's Books.

MATH and SCIENCE

Jay3fer reminds us not to put away the toys too soon in Cuisenaire Rods for Big(ger) Kids. She walks us through their use of the rods to figure out the area of a book cover, over at Adventures in Mama-Land.

Here on Baby Steps, I've been pondering what math really is, and concluding that It's Not What I Thought.

Mary tells about her adventures with Phony Poop in her son's digestive system lesson. I'm pretty sure that's one he'll remember for a loooong old time! She's blogging at Winecup Christian Academy.

Photo courtesy of Winecup Christian Academy.

HISTORY

At Blah, Blah, Blog, Pamela shares her memories of the morning of September 11th.

That's it! Thanks for stopping by! Past posts and future hosts for the Classical Homeschooling Carnival can be found on our index page. If you've got a post that would inspire the Classical Education community, please stop by our submission page and share it with us!

Carnival of Homeschooling

2011-09-22T10:19:00.001-05:00

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up, and there are some fun posts in it this week. Here are a few that I enjoyed:

Sage Parnassus shares a nostalgic poem about the bees.

The Homeschool Lifestyle -- pointing out the blessing of "extra" time with our children.

Cookie's Domain has a nice post about bird study resources. Some we're familiar with, others I haven't seen before.

Math, Math, and More Math

2011-09-20T00:19:00.012-05:00

I was feeling a little behind where I wanted to be - we had missed a few days and were out of sync with my schedule, particularly in Math. So we took 2 days and just focused on getting back to where my lesson plans said we ought to be in math. Happily, Math is one of Monkey's favorite things to do, so this was no chore at all.

Working on teen numbers as 10 + ____

We practiced finding the missing partners.

Here's a fun variant on Go Fish, called Go To the Dump, that I think we'll be doing in the next while to practice math facts. We did it once already with partners of 10, but I put too many combinations in, and Monkey is still really slow. I think that next time I'll put in only 2 or 3 pairs - 9/1, 8/2, and maybe 7/3. Then he'll get more intense repetition on the partners we're working with and can start to remember them out of his head a little better.

I've been thinking a lot about math lately, and we've got the first of the Miqon books on the way, we're going to add it to the Math Expressions that we're doing. The Cuisenaire Rods are already here, and so is the Lab Sheet Annotations book that's supposed to help me figure out what to do with the worksheets. But I don't actually have the worksheets, and I don't have the rest of the instructional materials for me to figure out this system. I've been looking at blog posts about other folks' experiences with it, though, and I like this idea for making it kid-directed. Very interesting. This looks like an entirely different take on math. Math with lots of toys. Jennifer, of Adventures in Mama-Land, says not to put away the toys too soon.

In fact, there's this whole thread at TWTM forums on how to drill math facts, but fun. I'm thinking that I'll be needing some of these games. Sure wish someone had made drilling facts fun for me when I was little! I just remember being so frustrated with those goofy timed tests. 100 problems in less than 5 minutes. Ugh.

What a Look!

2011-09-19T14:15:00.000-05:00

My brother sat down and started talking to Raven at Nana and Grandpa's house the other day. For his efforts, he was rewarded with The Look.

Aquarium Trip

2011-09-19T00:15:00.004-05:00

We went to see my sister and her husband, and they took us to their local Aquarium. What fun! And, it counts as school, since we're studying animals on science. Here are some of the pictures:

We saw the beluga whales - the baby was nursing while we were there!

There were all sorts of fun critters to see.

Sunday Scripture

2011-09-18T23:32:00.001-05:00

Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them.
Mosiah 4:9-10

It's Not What I Thought

2011-09-16T16:21:00.005-05:00

Numbers and counting. Throw in some rather arbitrary and abstract rules for moving those numbers around and you've got algebra. Advanced algebra's sine and cosine stuff was pure gibberish, but I remembered enough formulas long enough to do alright in the class. Geometry's proofs at least made sense. They had no practical value, but at least they made sense. I enjoyed the challenge posed by getting all the steps right in the long proofs. Trig completely defeated me.

This is math.

It all started over with teaching Math to Monkey. Only he didn't get the memo, so he had no idea that math is a "chore." That boy just inhales everything I show him about numbers. Has since he was pretty little. And because he was (is) so little, I've been careful to keep plenty of physical objects around to play with as we discuss the numbers. We've been as much playing as anything, often the numbers have been relatively incidental. For a while we were moseying through the book - we're working with Math Expressions - but lately I've been feeling like a skipped stone: no sooner do I land us in a section of the book than he comprehends it and we're off again, trying to keep up with where he's at. I asked him the other day if I'd even given him "hard math." He said no. So off I went to my forums. What do you do with a mathy kid anyway??

Turns out, you change your thinking.

I'd seen, and felt drawn to, cuisenaire rods whenever I saw them mentioned in the forums. Some people that are clearly very mathy seem to like them. A lot. But I never could figure out what you are supposed to do with them. They're sort of mysterious. So you build a staircase. That's nice. Now what?

I dunno. So I never bought them. But when Monkey started moving so quickly through our math book that I started feeling like a skipped stone, I went and searched the forums for information about them. There's plenty. I ended up reading a thread from last January.

One of the women asked her daughter, "Define 8." Now, me, I would have said something absolutely brilliant, had someone asked me that: "8 is... 8." That's all it is, what's to define? Her daughter said a whole lot more:

5+3, 6+2, 7+1, 8+0, 4+4 ("and all the opposites"), 1+2+2+3, 2x4, 4x2, 16/2, 24/3, 32/4, 40/5, 18-10, and eight ones.

It blew my mind, as did the discussion of "sixness" and how to go about teaching it - or if it was even necessary to fully explore "sixness." These people were discussing, as givens, ideas I'd never encountered, and the whole shape of my perception of math and numbers started to change as I was reading. I had some questions, so I started my own thread and learned some more. The people who responded were as concerned about the relationships between the numbers as they were about the answers to the questions. What a different attitude from the "show your work - and it better be the same as the book or it's wrong" type instruction I received! Then they offered me a link to a mathematician's comments on the matter. Being a musician, the opening had my attention right away:

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.

Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school. ...

In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. “I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.” ...

“To tell you the truth, most students just aren’t very good at music. They are bored in class, their skills are terrible, and their homework is barely legible. Most of them couldn’t care less about how important music is in today’s world; they just want to take the minimum number of music courses and be done with it. I guess there are just music people and non-music people. I had this one kid, though, man was she sensational! Her sheets were impeccable— every note in the right place, perfect calligraphy, sharps, flats, just beautiful. She’s going to make one hell of a musician someday. ...”

This I can understand. Music as an art, as something that must be felt, experienced, and enjoyed is a concept I readily understand and agree with. Lockhart goes on to say that Math is the same way.

The first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art. The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. ... Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood. (pg 3)

Ah-ha! This is what motivates my brother when he talked about solving a millennium problem. This is what makes people major in math! They're playing! (Incidentally, I saw one of those math people commenting on how much she enjoys her homework now. I believe that she just changed her major to mathematics, rather than math education.)This is what brings my brother-in-law so much enjoyment that he learned how to move a number to base 3 and then base 2... in his head. (He did that the day that I was teasing him about having a huge number of kids. If you change bases, then 8 isn't so many!)

The trick, then, is to discover how this is done so that Monkey and I can do it together.

I think this lady is onto something:

Pyramid Documentary

2011-09-15T23:17:00.000-05:00

Oh the things you can do with a few clicks of the mouse! We've been studying ancient Egypt, and I discovered that not only does Hulu have this National Geographic documentary, but they'll even let me embed it here! How cool that? We'll be watching it tomorrow morning.

Peacocks and Robins

2011-09-08T23:36:00.000-05:00

Cuneiform

2011-09-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

We're making our own "cuneiform" tablets today, and I wanted to show Monkey a little bit about something a little more authentic than what we're doing. I've got some video of him working on his tablet. Hopefully I can get that - and ~~all~~ a little of the other cool stuff I'd like to post - up here soon! Finding time for my blog has been tough lately. But here's the clips I'll be showing Monkey this afternoon, after he wakes up from his nap.

Yummy Ideas

2011-09-05T23:54:00.001-05:00

This looks tasty. I'm thinking about it. I think making cheese would be fun. Besides, the clip is funny. More toward the end, but it's in there.

Then there's this recipe for a cold cereal replacement. I'd love to replace our cold cereals with something more healthy. Only the hot cereals I've tried, my family won't eat. And muffins don't go over very well, not for breakfast. But cold cereal... it's not healthy. Tastes good, and it's what we usually eat, but it's not good for you. Nikki has a recipe for a replacement that I'm thinking about trying. And it's peanut butter. What's not to like? Nikki actually mentions a cookbook I have: Nurturing Traditions. The guy that wrote it is out there. Way out there. Comes across like a nutjob. But I've done some independent research, and the stuff he says about wheat and whole grains makes sense. It appears that his science is good. Plus, the recipes in the book, the ones I've tried anyway, are pretty tasty. Except he says you ought to eat organ meats. Liver and stuff. That doesn't sound very tasty. But his bread recipes? They work. The technique for this cereal is similar to the book. Who knows? Maybe it'd be something my family would eat.

And there's this one. Making Mozzarella. Man, that's interesting. I need to find a book about making cheese.

Adam and Eve Taught their Children to Write

2011-09-01T21:13:00.005-05:00

Next for history, we'll be doing Story of the World chapter 3: The First Writing. The chapter teaches that hieroglyphics and cuneiform are the earliest writing, but modern revelation teaches us that Adam and Eve were taught to write. We'll be adding this revealed information to the lesson on early writing. I thought I'd share what I'm substituting for the first paragraph in the book. I'm putting it into a story format so that it will fit seamlessly with the SOTW and we can then go right into the discussion of hieroglyphs and cuneiform. We'll be using a coloring sheet from the Children's Friend, and also adding a list of the Ancient Patriarchs to our memory work.

Adam and Eve were taught to write by the Lord, and they wrote down the things that happened to their family in their Book of Remembrance. They recorded the things the Lord taught them, and they taught their children to read and write so they would be able to learn and remember those important things. (Moses 6:5-6) As their family grew, many of them listened to Adam and Eve, learned the gospel, and became great men of God. They included Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, and Methuselah, and Noah. (Genesis 5; Doctrine & Covenants 107:53; Moses 6)

Coloring Sheet:
Adam and Eve Taught Their Children

Additional Reading:
How the Bible Came to Be, part 1 - includes a little blurb about new archaeological evidence

Patriarchs memory work:
Adam
Seth
Enos
Cainan
Mahalaleel
Jared
Enoch
Methuselah
Noah

Flowers at the Park

2011-08-31T22:00:00.001-05:00

Our park has installed a cool new toy: a flower kaleidoscope. The boys had a great time checking it out.

Postcrossing: Belarus

2011-08-31T09:55:00.000-05:00

Real Friends

2011-08-27T23:28:00.000-05:00

I've been reading about parenting tonight, and came across this fun "GOYBP" site. That is, "Get Off Your Butt Parenting." So far, I like what I see quite a bit. I'm reading this page, and it's got some awesome thoughts, including a story that moved me to tears. But the thing that brought me to my blog was this, about a friend. A real friend.

It’s humbling to admit that I didn’t realize my yelling was “that” bad. Nor did I realize how often and how loud I was yelling, until a friend who cared enough to tell the truth did just that. She told me my home sounded like her childhood home and though I was not yelling anything mean or shameful, my kids were still being affected by it.
I knew deep, deep down that she was right. I knew I needed help and support. I asked my dear friend if she would provide accountability in terms of yelling and 8 years later, she still asks me how I’m doing!

I hope that Joanne knows how fortunate she is to have a friend with that kind of courage. It's hard to be the one who says, "Hon, I love you, but you're waaay off here." It's scary. It has to be important because it's risking the whole friendship. What if she hates what you say and it spoils everything? I have spoiled friendships this way, by trying to be that friend. The one who said the hard things. Friendship, real friendship, is hard work. Sometimes, like everything else in life, in friendship there is opposition.

If being this kind of friend is hard, it's no picnic being the person on the receiving end either. It's never comfortable to take a good hard look at yourself and realize that something is seriously out of place. It's no wonder that we sometimes get angry at the person holding up the mirror where we find such unpleasant things! It takes courage to say, "Maybe you're right; I'll think about it," rather than snarling and leaving. I hope that the next time someone tries to do this for me I have the courage to be the kind of friend that Joanne was in her story.

Perhaps the coolest part of the story of Joanne and her friend is the way that it's turned out. Not only does it look like Joanne learned some new skills, but she's written this cool website, and who knows how many people have benefited from her idea of GOYBP. It seems particularly appropriate to me that the story would be on her page about becoming a Grace-Based Parent, since it seems clear to me that she's become an instrument in the Lord's hands in teaching people about parenting, and friendship, and who knows what else.

Nature: Puppies N Chicks

2011-08-22T00:05:00.004-05:00

Tie-Dye Results

2011-08-18T17:31:00.001-05:00

We had a friend over, and had a blast dying everything we could get our hands on. Got some cute stuff out of it, and learned a few things about tie-dye and batik.

Don't forget to let the stuff sit after you pull it out of the dye.
Rinse it while it's still tied up, so that the white stays brighter.
Wax melts nicely in my mini crock-pot, but
Batik has to be done on dry fabric. If it's wet it will resist the wax and take the dye.
Make sure you have plenty of space to hang things: if they touch the dye can transfer.

Classical Homeschooling Carnival #18

2011-08-18T16:52:00.003-05:00

Here it is again - another Classical HS Carnival! We've got quite a few entries this time, so settle in and enjoy!

A lot of families mark the start of their school calendar at this time of year. Cellista, of La Scuola d'Argento shares an intimate glimpse of a day in the life with her post, The First Day of School.

Paula ran unto a new idea late in her planning, and is reworking her schedule in Planning 201: Retreat and Regroup at Wakefield Academy.

Other folks are steaming along, full speed ahead. Nadene, of Practical Pages, shares how read-alouds have become the glue that holds their homeschool together through good days, bad days, and everything between, in Read-Alouds: the Homeschooling Glue.

Paige shares her new writing program with A Week with Classical Writing Aesop: Day 1. It's the first of a 5 part series on Elemental Blogging.

At Delightful Children's Books, Amy has made a great list of 11 Children's Books About Stars and Space.

If your student is a further along in their educational journey, try Regina's Ninth Grade Biology Notes at Green Apple's Blush.

Here on Baby Steps we have finally begun our study of Ancient History, and we kicked it off by building a Shaduf.

Last, but certainly not least, MissMOE has a lovely review, History Portfolio Review, posted at Homeschooling While Living the Life of Easier. She has many pictures, both before and after the pages were used, giving a nice feel for the portfolios.

That concludes this edition; I hope you enjoyed it! Submit your blog article to the next edition of Classical Homeschooling Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Review: I Heard the Owl Call My Name

2011-08-16T23:30:00.001-05:00

A very good friend of mine loaned me one of his favorite novels, I Heard the Owl Call My Name. After reading it, I can easily understand why this one would be a favorite. My inclination is to turn around and re-read it, which is a very unusual reaction for me to have to a book.

First of all, it;s got beautiful prose. The author, Margaret Craven, really has a gift with words. These would be words to read over and over in the hope that the cadence of them would seep into my own writing and make it beautiful as well.

"The Indian knows his village and feels for his village as no white man for his country, his town, or even for his own bit of land. His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as long as the sun rises and the moon sets. The myths are the villagae, and the winds and the rains. The river is the village, and the black and white killer whales that herd the fish to the end of the inlet the better to gobble them. The village is the salmon who comes up the river to spawn, the seal who follows the salmon and bites off his head, the bluejay whose name is like the sound he makes - 'Kwiss-Kwiss.' The village is the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die, and the silver-tipped grizzly who ambles into the village, and the little white speck that is the mountain goat on Whoop-Szo."

The author divides the village into a number of groups: the vicar, who is dieing but doesn't know it, and among the Indians there are the Elders who see the decline of their tribe with pain, the respectably middle-aged, and the Young, who increasingly are going over the bridge to the white man's world. They go for education, but in gaining an education they loose something of themselves. This division is extremely thought-provoking.

What is it that transmits a culture from one generation to the next? What keeps our village from disintegrating the way that the Tsawataineuk of Kingcome did? How do we educate our children, and how do our choices for their education shape the way our culture is - or is not - transmitted to them? This book is a thinker, and worthy of a second and third read.

Batman & Montoya

2011-08-15T18:18:00.000-05:00

Monkey built a drive through, and then the Batcycle was the first customer. This is how the story unfolded:

Batman: Hello.

Daddy: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. Would you like fries with that?

Batman: Yes. And also chicken nuggets.

Daddy: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You kill my father. Prepare for fries.

At this point Mom laughed so hard she could hardly speak.

Shaduf

2011-08-15T15:33:00.005-05:00

Photo credit: Wikipedia

We learned in Story of the World about ancient farmers using a shaduf to irrigate. Monkey asked me how it works, and I had some guesses, but looking at the descriptions, it became clear to me that I didn't know. But I also found some interesting clips on YouTube of some homemade shaduf projects. Pretty soon I'm thinking, "I could do that." So after lunch, we did.

Materials we used:

step ladder
6 foot staff
several feet of rope
masking tape
child's sand bucket
4 cans of fruit

What we did:

We used the rope to hang the staff from the ladder, and secured the rope in the center with some masking tape. It wasn't terribly sturdy, but it did do the job. Next, we taped 4 cans, totaling about 3.5 pounds, to the back end of the staff with masking tape. The various things I read indicated that the counterweight ought to equal the bucket of water. This was not what I would have expected, but it turned out very interesting once we built it. Then we attached the bucket to the other end with more masking tape, and let Monkey go at it, moving water from our wading pool to a large bucket.

The little guy didn't like how cold the water was straight from the hose, so he supervised the process from just outside the pool.

Meanwhile, Monkey experimented with different ways of using the machine, and found that some ways of using the shaduf are much, much easier to do than others.

The masking tape on the bucket end and fulcrum lasted for about an hour, which for one happy little boy was just about perfect. He was almost (though not quite) ready to be done, and it was time to go inside and fix dinner when the tape gave out. In addition to a very memorable afternoon playing with a shaduf, he also bumped into a number of science concepts: levers and fulcrums most particularly. We didn't make a big deal out of that part of the project, but when we do study them he'll have hands-on experience to draw on. I like that.

Weekly Wrap-up: Starting Fresh

2011-08-13T00:27:00.001-05:00

We'd planned to do school throughout the summer, but with all the excitement in our house, it didn't happen. Almost all the reconstruction is finished; we have a closet that needs to be painted, as well as some touch-up painting in the kitchen. The carpets are being cleaned next week, and then it's "just" a matter of getting all the stuff sorted back into its proper places. We picked school back up this week.

We started out with a birthday cake (Green Lantern), and the little guy had a run-in with hand, foot, and mouth disease. But he's much better now. By the time we did the shaduf on Thursday he was back to toddling around. I like that. After the high fevers and the painful blisters in his mouth, his little smile was a most welcome sight!

Easily the most exciting thing we did this week was building a shaduf, after we read about it in History. I have tons of cute pictures that I'm working on turning into a post of their own, so I'll just give you this one. It turned out awesome. Monkey also did a narration on what we did for the project.

What did we do?
We built a shaduf. We also used it.

How did it work?
It worked by us using tape and a string on a bo staff. Both ends got used. We attached one of my buckets to one end. Then we did the cans and put them on the back end.

What did the shaduf do?
It carried water. But ours was different from a real shaduf. What made it different is that the middle part wasn't the same. Our counterweight wasn't a rock; it was made out of cans.

Since we talked about levers, counterweights and the fulcrum, the shaduf included more than a passing nod at Science as well as History. But who's counting, right? Our official Science for the week was looking at dolphins and black-capped chickadees. I love the bird clips on YouTube. We see chickadees on our feeders all the time, and I've pointed out their call often enough that Monkey commented that it's familiar when he watched the clip. But there's something cool about the close-ups, and there are some really nice clips on there. This one calls itself a "mini-documentary."

Phonics is going well. Monkey is very comfortable with short vowel sounds now, and we're starting to introduce some of the other vowel sounds. It's going to take some practice, but he's getting there. We also added a few more review games from our Happy Phonics kit, which has been a nice change of pace. The "Build a Sentence" game has been a particular hit with Monkey, and I like it as well because it forces him to pay attention. The words in the game are pretty basic, so I may expand this game a little to make it reflect the rules we've learned recently.

I decided that our Math was not really challenging Monkey, and so we'd picked up the pace a while back, but still he didn't seem to be challenged. After making it a matter of prayer, I've decided to skip him ahead in the book a little. But this means we need some new manipulatives: cuisenaire rods and base 10 blocks. And, I need to re-plan what we're doing when. So, other than a few tanagrams one day, we didn't do math this week, and likely won't next week either.

We practiced Writing the letters N, R, and W this week, as well as doing the copywork, "Jesus made the world." He's doing well. Much more comfortable with capital letters still, but making progress.

We have several postcards that have come in since last we learned about the countries our cards come from for Geography. When I grabbed one, it was from Poland, so that's the country we learned about this time.

In Grammar, we're discussing pronouns, and I put the list of pronouns in Monkey's Memory work book. He's doing well on memorizing the list, and we're about halfway through the set of pronoun lessons in First Language Lessons. It's not very exciting, but it's building a good grammar foundation which will be useful later when we start doing foreign languages and more compositions.

Making Bread is Easy, Promise!

2011-08-10T21:14:00.001-05:00

I keep hearing people say how intimidated they are be making bread, specifically yeast breads. I guess my Dad did me a bigger favor than I knew when he said, early in my teen years, "Hey, why don't you make some bread?" I grabbed one of Mom's cookbooks, made a big mess (failure to clean up said mess nearly got me booted from the kitchen), and made some bread. Nobody told me it was difficult, so it never occurred to me to think it was. Looking back, I'm sure those first loaves wouldn't be winning any contests. But they made my Dad smile; he said I did well, and that was all the encouragement I needed! With the tough economic times, making bread is an easy way to reduce the grocery bill. Even a little homemade bread will make a difference in our grocery budget. I usually also make our english muffins, sometimes I take on bagels, and occasionally I'll make tortillas. I like homemade tortillas, but Monkey loves to help and he slows that process down a lot. Basic bread, though, doesn't mind the small helpers much. Let 'em mix, let 'em "knead" and off you go, no problem.

Bread, like any other skill, gets easier and better with practice. Don't feel like because the first batch didn't work out, it never will. As you get the hang of what the dough feels like (soft, not dry, but not *quite* sticky) you'll learn how to do it. Every batch of flour is a little different, so don't stick hard and fast to the recipe - if it's a bit dry add at tbsp of water, if it's a little sticky, add a little more flour. No kittens will die if it's not perfect ! I have a kitchen aid, but I don't like to use it for bread (makes the bowl super hard to get off to wash), so I always mix and knead by hand. About 2-3 cups of flour will make a nice size loaf, or a pizza crust, or sometimes we roll it out a cut it with simple cookie cutters, or run the pizza cutter through to make bread sticks. Bread is actually very forgiving, once you get the hang of it. Here's my favorite recipe. I have made it so many times now that I hardly measure anymore, so the amounts are approximate. This recipe began its life as a pizza dough recipe, so I'll give those instructions first.

Pizza or Bread Sticks or "Fish Bread" or Loaves
1 cup water, lukewarm
2 1/2 flour
1 t salt
generous dash sugar
~2 T oil
1 T yeast
pizza spices (opt)

Put yeast in water, set aside. Mix flour (may sub up to 1c whole wheat, I haven't really tested past that), salt, sugar, oil, and pizza spices if desired. Yeast should be beginning to make the water cloudy, then foam up a bit. Sometimes I put a little sugar in the water to help it along. Pour yeast/water mixture into flour. Stir.

At this point I always have to adjust the flour/water ratio a bit. I keep my flour bucket next to me as I work and toss a little more in as needed. I often start with dough that's dry, so I add some water, but inevitably it's too wet. If It's only a tiny bit too wet, let it sit 10 minutes. Some of my best bread has happened when I let wet dough sit 10 minutes; it gets more workable. Once you have the water/flour right, then you knead it. And when you think it's done, knead it some more. And a little more for extra measure. Your mouth will thank you! Then, roll it out. If I'm doing pizza, I roll it right on my pizza stone. If I'm making bread sticks, I roll them on the counter, cut into strips with my pizza cutter, and move the strips to the pizza stone. If I'm doing "fish bread" we roll it out, cut it with cookie cutters, and repeat, just like cookies. Knead a bit between batches, and if it gets too tough, let it rest 10-15 minutes before you roll it ought again. Bake about 8 min at 400F. Then either build your pizza or brush with some garlic butter. YUM!

If you want bread for loaves, reduce the oil or eliminate it altogether (I forget it half the time anyway... not a big deal, though it tastes better for the pizza-type stuff). Knead, same as before, till you're sick of it and then just a little longer. Oil a clean bowl, spin the dough around in there so it's got oil on every side, then flip a towel over and ignore it for an hour. Should be around twice as big. If it's not, give it an extra 1/2 hour. If it's chilly in the house, I'll stick it in the oven with the light on - but cover it with plastic wrap, cuz that will dry it right out. Pull it out of the bowl, and shape it into whatever makes you happy. Sometimes I'll round it a bit by tucking at the bottom so the top stretches smooth a bit, then put it on my pizza stone. I like to score the top with a knife a little - it's pretty. Sometimes I'll shape it into an oval, and those fit nicely into a loaf pan. Bake at 350F, and start keeping an eye on it around 20 minutes. When it's done it should be golden brown, it should smell heavenly (that's the biggest clue), and if you tip it out of the pan, the bottom will be golden brown, and done.

This clip of Julia Child was super helpful to me, though she and her friend are WAAAAY more fussy than I am. But the stuff they say about flour, and about kneading the bread, I learned a lot from. YouTube has a number of great clips. I learned how to braid challah from YouTube a while back. That's pretty - and easy too, once you've seen the video! Happy Baking!

I Needed This Today

2011-08-09T23:27:00.000-05:00

Speaking The Truth in Love

Dolphins

2011-08-05T19:55:00.001-05:00

Learning about animals is a lot of fun, but it can be hard to find clips that aren't pushing an agenda, and I'm just looking for educational clips at this point, not clips that condemn all human activity as evil! Time enough to discuss the difference between earth worship and being a good steward when Monkey's a little older. At this point, I'm just looking for information and exposure to the amazing variety of animals the Lord made for us. These clips are both pretty good. The first is a clip of a pod of dolphins swimming underwater. The second is a blurb from SeaWorld which really showcases the dolphins' ability to jump without coming across like a commercial.

Lizards!

2011-08-04T14:25:00.001-05:00

We read about people eating lizards in the first chapter of Story of the World, but Monkey didn't know what lizards are, so we'll need to learn about those too. YouTube is great for that.

Learning to Self-Educate

2011-08-03T08:41:00.003-05:00

Shortly after I got married, we moved from the campus of UIUC where I had been studying Japanese, to Purdue, where I planned to get an elementary education degree while my husband finished his education in engineering. Before classes started we felt strongly that I should not attend the university at that time. I cried, and then canceled my registration. I loved school, I loved learning, and mourned that the Lord was directing me away from the only way I knew to "become educated."

Read the rest of my discovery of self-education over at LDS Parenting.

Miscommuincation

2011-07-27T21:42:00.000-05:00

Monkey: Mom! I'm thirsty!

Mom: You're in the shower!

Monkey: I want people water!

Oops. Guess I should be more specific. That should have been, "You're in the shower you can have some when you get out!"

Birthday Boy!

2011-07-27T19:13:00.000-05:00

World's Cutest 1 Year Old!

Review: Happy Phonics and Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading

2011-07-24T17:21:00.001-05:00

When Monkey was a still 1, he asked to use my mouse (what could be more fun than using this thing that captivates Mom's attention so much?!), and I turned him loose on Starfall. He could barely click at first, but by 2, I had to limit his computer time, and he'd learned all his letters and their sounds. I knew I wanted to teach using phonics, but was at a loss as to how to proceed, so I began looking at the various phonics courses out there. The ones I could get my hands on looked thorough, but they were hopelessly dry and so boring that I could barely stand to look at them myself. I couldn't imagine trying to use them with so young a child. Still, I felt that it only made sense to offer him the next step on the journey to reading, so I kept looking. My search ended with the discovery of Happy Phonics.

Happy Phonics is a phonics-based system for teaching children to read, and everything is a game. For my very young reader, this was perfect. No stilted dialogs for us! We play games when we sit down to practice reading. Thus far, the "Reading House" is Monkey's favorite. It's a house with a window cut out, where the ending of the words peek out. Monkey "burns up" the beginning sounds as he reads them. Some days Mom is required to air-life water to put out the flames, though that doesn't actually contribute to the reading. But it sure is fun!

My only complaint with Happy Phonics is that it's not complete. It teaches cvc words, but leaves the new reader largely on their own for figuring out 2 consonant blends at the ends of words, for example. And, if Mom doesn't know very much about phonics, it doesn't offer much in the way of an education. This program makes a lot of assumptions.

Enter The Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading. This is one of those books full of stilted dialogs. Reading it, as I was trying to decide how to teach phonics, kind of made me want to poke my eye out. But it's very systematic, and very thorough. Each sound is explained, each rule gone over. I needed that sort of hand-holding. We skipped the first set of lessons, on what is each letter. Starfall had taken care of that for us. But we used the word lists to add to our Happy Phonics games, and also a few file-folder games we made. Some lists we made into "Go Fish" which became Monkey's new favorite. All of the lessons include a little reading, which I printed onto little booklets I'd made by sewing down the center of several sheets of paper. Then, Monkey's Daddy or I will draw simple illustrations (think Bob Books), and it's a real book for him to practice with. Monkey never actually sees this book while we're learning, but it's an important part of my preparation. And I'm much more confident that I'm not missing something important.

Separately, I'm not very impressed with either one of these programs. But together, they make beautiful music at our house, and Monkey is doing great with learning to read.

Getting Ready to Dye

2011-07-23T17:38:00.000-05:00

I'm short on shirts, and the boys are both going to need some new clothes this fall. I want to try doing some batik on a skirt and some shirts. I also want to play around with some tie-dye. So I'm collecting information on how to do it.

First, the tie-dye ties:

Then, a bit on how to batik:

Classical Homeschooling Carnival #17

2011-07-20T18:03:00.000-05:00

My life got crazy, the deadline passed, and the submissions for May's carnival sat so long that I thought for a minute the carnival people had deleted them. But they're still there, so May's carnival has become July's carnival. To those who submitted, I'm very sorry. My life has been a zoo.

But we're recovering nicely now; the carpet was reinstalled in the upstairs and the basement this morning. They'll be back to put the baseboards back tomorrow, and then we'll move the mattresses OUT of the living room and back into the bedrooms where they belong! I can hardly wait. In the mean time (What does that mean, anyway? "Mean time. Average time? Cruel time?), these submissions aren't any less wonderful for being slightly dated. Enjoy!

Over at Teachable Moments, Jessica was winding up their school year and enjoying the flexibility that homeschooling allows when she wrote and submitted Doing It Our Way..., which is much more than just a wind-up post, and still very relevant, including such gems as this:

“We tried. We grew. We learned.” ~ me.

The Mama, at Concordia Classical Academy, talks a little about How to Teach Reading. I sure wish I'd thought of doing blending orally before doing it with written letters! She's got some great ideas.

Karyn, of Teach Beside Me, is creating a lovely resource for using The Burgess Animal Book for Children in science. She's shared Chapter 1 with the carnival.

Head on over to Sparks of Learning to read Alicia's glowing review of Primary Mathematics (aka: Singapore).

For my own contribution, we did an owl pellet dissection, which Monkey loved. I did too: I'd never done one before. Learning with the kids has got to be one of the best parts of homeschooling.

And when you're done with all that, take a second trip through those blogs for the great posts they've put up more recently. I think every single one of them had something that made me stop and read a bit as I was getting all my links. Don't forget to submit your post to the next edition of the carnival; we'd love to have you!

Links Links Links

2011-07-20T00:09:00.000-05:00

Haven't had time to collect many links lately, but it sure is fun to browse around a bit when there is time. So many good ideas out there! Got a pretty good grab-bag this time. Enjoy!

Here's a good one: Keeping Hands Busy and Minds Engaged During Read-Alouds. There's enough good stuff in this one to keep a family coming back for more and more for quite a while!

One Obama Presser [press release] 36 Obama Lies and Deceptions. They've gone through point-by-point, sometimes several in a sentence. I love that kind of breakdown of an article. It's particularly unfortunate that it's lies our President told us this time.

I've got a shirt that I'm going to make. Well, I'm going to make it after the mess in my home is settled, after I find my sewing machine, and after I find my fabric, and after I find my pattern. I suspect that none of those things are actually together in the same place. But one of these days I'm going to make this fun knit shirt. I haven't done very many knits. None, actually. And Burda has this article about using a toile - that's a muslin mock-up for folks like me that don't know the fancy terms - that's just in time and has some great tips.

My Grandma died last year, and one of the things my Mother brought home was the string of pearls plant Grandma had in her kitchen window. The plan was to propagate it and pass out the babies so we all could have some of Grandma's plant. Only, the poor thing went into shock over being transported 1500 miles in a car. And it's kind of been downhill from there. Now I've got one tiny little strand of pearls that I'm trying to re-root in some fresh dirt. As a result, I've been reading what little I can find about this plant. If anyone's got one and would care to offer advice, I could use it. This and this are what I've found that's useful. It's not much to go on. But the poor little plant isn't dead yet!

Red-Wing Blackbirds

2011-07-19T16:50:00.001-05:00

We're trying to grab the tattered shreds of Normal and put them back into a routine. The kitchen is making good progress in getting back together. We just need to have the laminate installed and finish painting the rebuilt areas. Upstairs, the rebuilding is also nearly finished: we need new pad and to have the carpet stretched back out. Of course, to do that, we have to get all the junk that was dumped up there in the course of all this out of the shuffling that's gone on around here for the past month. But it looks like they'll be doing the carpet tomorrow, which means that we'd move our beds OUT of the living room and BACK into the bedrooms upstairs. Hallelujah!!

While we're trying to get all that figured out, I though a little school would be fun. The boys had a good time watching the bird videos. We're doing red-wing blackbirds, but Monkey watched some others too, and I liked the one about the indigo buntings so well that I've posted it too.

Welcome to My Living Room...

2011-06-30T13:47:00.002-05:00

This is what you see when you walk in the front door. Good thing it's just for today. I think we'd have a hard time finding anyone to be house guests!

Pelican Narration

2011-06-27T23:40:00.001-05:00

Photo courtesy WikiMedia Commons.

What with all the water damage and clean up, school is wee bit disrupted. But we did a few things today, including finally getting around to learning about pelicans and watching the videos I chose a while back. We've actually seen these beauties in action on our nature study trips, but I think we may go back and look for them some more, though looking at the maps on All About Birds today I wondered if they were just visiting during migration. We'll see. Anyway, Monkey did an awesome narration for them:

I like pelicans. Pelicans can stick their head under water. They do that to catch fish. They dive in head first. They just put their head underwater. They are trying to hunt for fish, and most of the time it’s very tricky for them, but pelicans will get the hang of it.

As far as the house, we're in a quasi-normal lull in the work right now. The main floor tear out is finished, but we're waiting on asbestos testing before we can tear out the damaged stuff upstairs. We even had the electrician come back and our power is back to normal so we had air condition this afternoon. It was 86, and Monkey talked me into a bike ride, so you can bet I was counting my blessings to have the air back! So far, there isn't any rebuilding going on. It's nice to have a bit of a break before the craziness comes back to my house full strength again.

Showers of Blessing

2011-06-22T23:56:00.001-05:00

And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.
-Ezeliel 34:26

I'm still feeling so blessed. They started tearing out the ceiling in my kitchen hall today. They're going to take away the popcorn ceiling and we'll have something that doesn't eat the light like that. And we're going to get a new light fixture. We'll have to buy that ourselves, but there's no sense in putting back an old, broken fixture onto a lovely new ceiling. It's going to be great. Right now it's looking a little rough.

But there is more to life than unexpected home repairs. Like, today it rained. Good drenching rain. The sort that even if you run from the car to the door you'll probably be more or less soaked. Monkey and his Daddy headed to the theater and watched Kung Fu Panda 2. I took the baby to a bookstore. Bliss. I browsed like I haven't been able to in a long time. Years, maybe. And the baby slept through most of it. I even sat down on the floor and read for a few minutes. I brought home a biography of George Washington and a book about dinosaur fossils. That one is cool; it's got a cardboard model of a T-rex skeleton we get to build. All I have to do is convince Monkey that while the house is torn up is not the best time to be building a model.

When I was just about done at the bookstore, my husband called me and wanted to know if I'd come have dinner at Applebee's. Sure! In all this popping in and out of places I noticed that Raven was really loving this whole water from the sky thing. He'd turn his face up to the rain and just laugh. It was adorable. So when we got home, I let him play. Told Monkey to go take off his shoes and leave them on the porch with his socks, and we ran and splashed in the rain. Splash and laugh. It was amazing! I haven't had so much fun in ages! Monkey was running across the lawn and the puddles on the sidewalk - our sidewalks make some first class puddles. He'd yell for us to follow him, and Raven would try, but the little cutie has short legs, and he tends to cross one foot in front of the other when he walks, so running isn't quite working yet, and we'd only move a few feet in the time it took for Monkey to zoom across the whole yard.

Splash. Zoom. Laugh. Splash. Stomp. Zoom. Giggle.

I hope it rains again soon.

Drama Made From Drips

2011-06-20T16:17:00.006-05:00

I have 29 industrial fans in my home, and 2 super-capacity dehumidifiers. True, some of the fans are now turned off. But still. That's a whole heck of a lot of fans. They're noisy, and they make a lot of heat. It's about 99F upstairs this afternoon. And humid. Yep, that's where the bedrooms are, in case you were wondering. We decided that air mattresses and the living room couch were more palatable for the time being, and we're camping out in the living room.

You know, the industrial dry-the-carts-at-Walmart kind of fans.

The carpets are torn up upstairs, so the fans can be tucked under them. The pads in those areas are gone. The nice workers drilled some holes in our ceiling. That's so the wind can get in there and dry things off. My husband enjoys telling folks it looks like someone took a 50-cal anti-tank gun to out home. He's not far wrong.


The gray dots are the holes. There's tons of them.

What happened? Our 2nd floor sink was clogged & got left on a little while we were out for 11 1/2 hours on Friday afternoon. Things were ~~damp~~ completely soaked when we got home. Down the stairs, then through them and down the basement stairs too. Nearly every room in our home is affected. All those fans are using up all our home's capacity for powering things, so our AC is unplugged and our washer and dryer are out of commission, my microwave trips the circut breakers, and I haven't dared try the dishwasher.

But.

The living room was least affcted, so we have a flat, dry spot, large enough to sleep the whole family. And it's got the best windows and the best circulation in the house.

Speaking of circulation, it's been unseasonably cool this weekend, so the air our little box fan is pumping into the living room is not only cooler than than the indoor sauna this has created, it's cooler than what we would have set the AC to. So the living room and computer room are pretty bearable to be in.

Speaking of the weather, it's been rainy, so we haven't needed to think about the garden. But not so rainy that we couldn't get outside for the boys to play in the only "normal" area on our property: the yard.

With all that water, which was in nearly every room in our house, we didn't loose any personal items. Not.One.Thing. Not the books on the bookshelves, not the scrapbooks placed on the top of bookshelves located directly under the upstairs bathrom's sink in my main floor music room. Not the stuff in the boxes under the stairs (though most of those boxes are trashed, the stuff inside was no more than damp). Not the pictures on the walls. Nothing. Only the house is damaged. I find that simply miraculous.

This process is proving to be massively inconvenient. Massively. But that's all. I feel so blessed. And I'm trying so hard to appreciate the blessings and stay cheerful. Wish me luck on that - I'm pretty short on sleep. But still. How can I be too upset when the hand of the Lord is so clearly evident?

American White Pelican

2011-06-12T18:12:00.000-05:00

We're learning about American White Pelicans this week. When I searched for coloring sheets to go with it, I found this whole cool packet that includes an oiled feathers activity that I think we'll be doing. I'll need to pick up some craft feathers, but I've been meaning to do that for a while. We'll probably also go see if we can't observe them at the park again. There's a flock of them hanging out down on the river. But that's far away for observing how they eat,, so before we go we'll watch a couple of clips to see what we're looking for.

Let's Pretend

2011-06-10T16:57:00.000-05:00

"Let's pretend to be dirt. And the excavator will cover us up with dirt for naps, and then when we wake up it will scoop us up and the dump truck will dump us down the stairs."

Dating History

2011-06-09T17:48:00.006-05:00

Next week we start our formal study of history. We'll spend a week talking about the roles of archaeology, scripture, and revelation in knowing what happened in the past, then we'll start with Creation the following week. I'm very excited, except for one thing: the dates in ancient history give me a headache. I'll be starting with Creation, placing Adam & Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden at 4000BC, but from there things get very tricky. The Bible Dictionary's "Chronology" entry says this:

Bible chronology deals with fixing the exact dates of the various events recorded. For the earliest parts of the O.T. history we rely entirely on the scripture itself; but the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint or Greek translation, and the Samaritan Pentateuch do not agree together, so that many dates cannot be fixes with certainty. From the time of David onwards we get much assistance from secular history, e.g., inscriptions on monuments and other state records. Much work has still to be done in this direction. The dates found at the top of many printed English Bibles are due to Archbishop Ussher. Some of them have been shown to be incorrect...

Saul's reign is listed at 1095BC, with David's reign beginning around 1055. There's a whole lot of time between 4000BC and 1095. And I need to come to peace with some kind of dating system so as to not confuse my munchkin with the nuances of dating. Ugh. The Story of the World,starting in chapter 2, has dates that at least fit into the 4000BC - present timeframe. We may just go with those dates, and fit the Biblical history in the best we can; I'm no kind of expert and for a lot of the things we study in history I'll be learning right along with Monkey. I already have a Book of Centuries that I made several years ago. Now I'm printing out this one for him to use. I love a lot of things a BoC does. Keeps things in order, brings perspective to time, helps to see what different areas of the world were doing, and helps me remember and relate stuff I've already studied to new topics of study. But a BoC does require dates. And right this minute that's sort of stressful.

Postcrossing: Nurnberg, Germany

2011-06-05T23:28:00.002-05:00

Barn Owl Babies!

2011-06-03T21:27:00.000-05:00

We actually missed the big moment; the babies finished hatching last week. But the nest cam people were kind enough to post a clip of the 3rd baby hatching on YouTube.

Memorial Day

2011-06-02T01:08:00.000-05:00

Postcrossing: St. Petersburg, Russia

2011-05-31T16:04:00.000-05:00